Project Phase
Independent Assurance, Peer Review, pre-FID
Disciplines
Subsurface & Reservoir, Subsea Discipline Engineers, Front End Development Engineers, Technical Safety, Project Services, Project Managers
Location
Offshore Brazil
Service
Advisory
Summary
Infinity carried out an independent, owner-side assurance review of an offshore Brazilian development ahead of sanction, working across the subsurface and the facilities together — reservoir basis, development plan, subsea system, safety case and environmental consent — and issuing a formal review report to the operator.
Overview
The operator was preparing to develop an accumulation tied back to an existing production facility and needed independent confirmation that the development plan was robust before committing. Infinity were given access to the full development data set and worked through it as a single assurance exercise rather than a series of discipline checks. Critically, that included the subsurface: the static model, the reservoir management plan and the production profiles underpinning the development were reviewed alongside the facilities design rather than taken as a fixed input. The review also covered the executive development plan, the safety case and the environmental impact assessments for both the new accumulation and the host field, and ran alongside a structured clarification process with the operator’s subsurface and project teams.
Objective
- Provide independent assurance of the development plan ahead of the investment decision
- Test the reservoir basis, static model and production profiles against the facilities design
- Confirm the safety case and environmental consent position supported the proposed development
- Identify and rank the risks carrying the greatest exposure to cost and schedule
Assurance Streams
Clarification Packages
Formal Report Revisions
Key findings
- Reviewing subsurface, facilities, safety case and consent together surfaced issues that discipline-by-discipline review would not have connected
- Design optimisation opportunities existed in the layout that had not been visible to the project team
- Production profiles and subsurface assumptions had been carried into the facilities design without being re-tested against the current reservoir basis
- The consent and safety case position placed real constraints on execution sequencing
- The project risk register understated a small number of high-consequence items
- Structured clarification, rather than a single written review, resolved the majority of findings before report issue
Differentiator
Infinity sit deliberately at the join between subsurface and facilities, which is where most development value is won or lost and where neither a pure reservoir consultancy nor a pure engineering house is positioned to look. On this review that meant testing the production profiles and the facilities design against each other rather than in sequence. Infinity worked as an extension of the operator’s own team rather than as a remote reviewer, running a live clarification process across almost sixty separate queries. Infinity also revised the operator’s project risk register directly, so the review left the project with an improved control document rather than only a list of comments.
Outcome
The operator received a formally issued assurance report, taken through two revisions, together with a revised risk register and a set of design optimisation recommendations. The review gave the board independent confirmation of the development basis at the point of sanction.
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