STATOIL - North Sea Visund Field

Project Status

StatoilHydro ASA has finished drilling two appraisal wells in the Pan/Pandora find south of the Visund field in the North Sea. Data acquisition and sampling have been carried out on the wells.

The wells will be permanently plugged and abandoned.

StatoilHydro is considering whether to develop the find and connect it to the Visund field. 

The Pan/Pandora find was confirmed in October 2008 during drilling of exploration well 34/8-14S.

Borgland Dolphin will next drill at production license PL089 in the North Sea to drill the 34/7-34 exploration well, which also is operated by StatoilHydro.

As of October 2009, Norwegian oilfield services company Aker Solutions has been awarded two contracts, valued at Nkr300 million ($54.2 million), by StatoilHydro to deliver subsea equipment to its Visund and Troll fields in the North Sea.

Both contracts are call-offs from existing frame agreements between StatoilHydro and Aker Solutions.

Final deliveries will be made in the first quarter of 2011.

As of March 2010, Statoil has awarded Aibel the contract for "Time-limited Modification Capacity for Gullfaks and Visund". The value of the contract will be in the order of MNOK 130.

The contract will start immediately and will have one year's duration. Around 80 employees will be engaged in the project execution. Project management will be located in Aibel's Bergen office.

As of end June 2010, Statoil has awarded Aker Solutions a frame agreement for maintenance and modifications on their offshore installations Visund in Norway.

The contract period is for four years and includes options for further extensions up to four years. The yearly volume of the contract will fluctuate, but Aker Solutions estimates the typical volume to be approximately NOK 1.1 billion per year.

Preparations activities will start immediately.  

The contract parties are Aker Solutions' subsidiary Aker Offshore Partner AS and Statoil Petroleum AS.

As of early November 2010, Statoil has shut in the Visund platform after discovering corrosion on the outside of a separator tank. 

Output from the North Sea installation was first shut in last weekend as a new well was brought on stream. 

During a scheduled inspection this week corrosion on the outside of a separator tank was uncovered. 

Bolts and flanges were rusted, but there was no hole in the tank itself.  Statoil is still carrying out tests to determine the severity of the corrosion.

As of early April 2011, Statoil has also found it necessary to conduct special investigations at Visund, and this installation will therefore also be shut down. 

In the autumn of 2010, faults were discovered on some of the risers on the Njord A platform. An extraordinary inspection programme was therefore initiated. The inspection was performed visually by means of video camera that was sent down the risers.

As of mid April 2011, Norway's Statoil stated that its Visund oil and gas field, closed for inspection after gas leak, will resume production "within a month" if no serious problems are discovered. 

The production stoppages will not prevent Statoil from achieving its overall production targets, assuming the stoppages are not "long term". 

The company shut down operations in the Visund field after a leak in riser pipes from the seabed.   It was inspecting risers at five other installations where Statoil is the operator.

As of end May 2011,  Statoil’s first fast-track project – Visund South – is moving ahead as planned. The seabed template has commenced its journey out to the field located south of Gullfaks in the North Sea.

The Visund South seabed template was placed on a barge at Grenland Group’s yard in Tønsberg end May 2011. It will be installed on the field between the Gullfaks C and Visund platforms in June. Visund South is expected to come on stream in 2012.

The template is the first to have been built from a standard catalogue for subsea equipment. This will form the basis for the continuing development and use of the standard catalogue in the fast-track portfolio.

Visund South field installation will take place at the same time as that on the Marulk development, which Statoil is carrying out on behalf of operator Eni. This will mean increased efficiency and cost savings for both projects.

As of early June 2011, FMC Technologies has signed a deal with Statoil worth $50 million to manufacture and supply subsea production equipment to support Visund Nord offshore project.

FMC will manufacture two subsea production trees, one manifold and associated subsea and topside control systems.

The integrated structure and wellhead systems will be delivered in the spring of 2012. Final deliveries will occur in the first quarter of 2013.

(Topco)