BP are to postponed construction of their £500 million, Sullom Voe, gas sweetening plant for at least five months.

The gas sweetening facility project has been pushed back until spring 2016 in an effort to reduce cost during the oil price slump. Permission was granted for construction of the facility in June of 2014 by Shetland Islands Council

The gas sweetening plant will remove hydrogen sulphide from sour gas piped in by Total from the West of Shetland.

BP have said work to clear the 16 hectare site adjacent to the existing oil terminal, which was originally scheduled to begin in January, would start later this month.

Petrofac will now delay bringing in the 500 workers to build the actual plant until early next year with a target to start operating in late 2017.

A BP spokeswoman said the company was examining all its capital projects after the price of oil crashed from over $100/barrel to less than $50, though it has subsequently risen to just above $60.

She said: ”Maximising the economic recovery of gas and oil from west of Shetland remains a priority. We are not cancelling projects, but we are deferring and pushing back in some instances.

We continue to design and schedule work for an onshore gas sweetening plant on the existing Sullom Voe Terminal site in order to sustain oil production for west and east of Shetland and a secure long-term, reliable SVT (Sullom Voe Terminal) operation.

SVGS (Sullom Voe gas sweetening) is not as mature as some of our other projects, so it is one of those we are looking to re-phase.

Given the external climate however, it is prudent to review the project costs and timescales and we have chosen to defer procurement and site preparation by 4-5 months. This will also allow the project to reset to better weather windows providing a better basis on which to proceed.”

Everyone is looking at the capital projects and seeing where we could benefit from slowing down.”

Other projects where they were already 'cutting steel', such as the £4.5 billion Clair Phase 2 project to unlock 640 million barrels of oil from the giant Clair field west of Eshaness, remain on schedule, she said.

The current £250 million refurbishment of the oil terminal at Sullom Voe to make it fit for the next 30 years is proceeding on schedule.

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