| Collection | GB 0231 University of Aberdeen, Special Collections |
| Level | Fonds |
| Ref No | MS 3801 |
| Title | TOTAL E&P UK: MCP-01 platform, Frigg Transportation System and St Fergus papers |
| Date | 1971 - current |
| Extent | 481 volumes; 866 digital volumes; 6 items; 146 digital items; 11 discs: 19 linear metres |
| Creator Name | Various, though predominantly Total and its predecessors. |
| Administrative History | Total Oil Marine (TOM) was incorporated on 8 July 1964 as a subsidiary of Total Compagnie Francaise des Petroles. After the 1999 merger with PetroFina, the company was called TotalFina and TotalFinaElf following another merger a year later, with Elf Aquitaine. In May 2003 it was renamed Total. Total has operations in 130 countries and, then as now, is headquartered in Paris.
TOM was concerned with the exploration and drilling in the North Sea. After the discovery of Frigg gas in 1972, TOM assumed responsibility for the design, construction and operation of the Frigg Transportation System and onshore terminal from Aberdeen, Scotland. Elf, based in Stavanger, Norway, was responsible for the Frigg Field.
The UK upstream subsidiary has been through several changes and in the latest, became a Private Limited Company on 15 January 2007. Since then its name has been Total E&P UK Ltd. The catalogue uses the company's name as it was when the documents were created. Based in Aberdeen, Scotland, it is the fourth-largest operator in the UK sector of the North Sea.
Total operates the UK pipeline which used to be part of the Frigg Transportation System and continues to operate the terminal at St Fergus. The Norwegian pipeline, now re-named Vesterled, is operated by Gassco, and Total is the technical operator. |
| Source | Retained by various European offices of Total or by specialist offsite storage companies before being passed to the Archive. |
| Description | The records have been arranged into five function-based sub-fonds. The first three, MCP-01, St Fergus and the Frigg Transportation System, contain records created by and necessary to run those installations. It includes procedure manuals, safety records, logs, photographs, surveys, correspondence and reports. The fourth, Total Publications, comprises publications by Total that are about Frigg or the company in general, and that were neither created by the installations nor necessary to run them. The fifth sub-fonds comprises oral history recordings and summaries.
Gas from the several fields utilising the FTS (joining at either the Manifold Compression Platform MCP-01 or formerly TP1 and TCP2 at the Frigg Field) is processed at the terminal. Records concerning these are not within the scope of this project and have not been actively accessioned. This includes records relating to active fields where pipeline bypass works were carried out as a result of Frigg's decommissioning. Those records have remained with the records of the mother field. Due to the interlinked nature of the fields and pipelines, however, there are some records that make reference to those other fields or pipelines. |
| Appraisal | The collection has been appraised in line with normal archival procedures. Duplicates have been removed where possible. Company records relating to the Frigg Field as a whole have been included where they contain relevant information or are necessary to provide context, but otherwise are considered to be outside the scope of the collection. |
| Accruals | Yes |
| Arrangement | Due to the restructuring of the departments and their roles, and the inheritance of records due to mergers with other companies, it has not always been possible to identify and re-create the original record-keeping structure. The records are, therefore, grouped by installation then by department and function. The first three sub-fonds contain records produced by and for the MCP-01, FTS or St Fergus. Publications about these installations are available in 'TOTAL Publications'. The fifth lists the oral history interviews. |
| Access Status | Restricted |
| Access Conditions | Most of the material is open but some material is restricted by TOTAL. If material is shown as Restricted, please inform the Reading Room of your access request, and staff will make make an application to TOTAL to request access. Access restrictions will be reviewed every five years in consultation with TOTAL. |
| Language | English |
| Physical Description | For the bulk of the collection, there are no physical conditions affecting access. Some records are only available digitally, usually PDF. Although the majority of material is in English, there is a small minority of records in or partly in French or Norwegian, for which there may not always be an English translation available. |
| Related Material | Several smaller, offshore-related collections have also been accessioned. See factsheet on Oil & Gas Resources in Special Collections. |
| URL | https://abdn.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/collectionDiscovery?vid=44ABE_INST:44ABE_VU1&collectionId=81151715970005941 |