The Emerald Producer was a Floating Production Facility (FPF). The rig was previously an Aker H-3 twin hull self propelled semi submersible drilling rig known as the Ali Baba and was converted to produce over 50,000 barrels of oil per day and designed to withstand 100 year storm conditions. In the summer of 1992 the Emerald Producer was installed in the Emerald Field which is located in Block 2/15a, some 200 miles northeast of Aberdeen and 75 miles northeast of Lerwick in the East Shetland Basin, at a water depth of 150 meters in the Northern North Sea.

The Emerald field consisted of two separate floating units. The “Emerald Producer" an FPF, and the “Ailsa Craig” a Floating Storage Unit (FSU) as can be seen in the distance on the photograph above. Stabilised crude is exported 2.3 km from the FPF to the FSU. At regular intervals a shuttle tanker would appear and export the oil back to shore.
Margin Oil Field Development was effectively pioneered by Midland and Scottish Resources PLC with the Emerald Field being one of the first fields to operate with a storage tanker in this way. Such an innovation was planned to enable offshore oil field installations to access smaller caps of oil and be relocatable assets. For the next vessel ...