Oslo-listed Subsea 7 has won a front-end engineering contract for the marine installations associated with Equinor’s planned Krafla development offshore Norway.
Subsea 7’s FEED work is required to finalise the technical definition of the proposed project prior to Equinor and its partners taking a final investment decision, which is planned for late 2022. The FEED study will begin immediately.
The contractor is hoping that its study work will lead to a follow-on engineering, procurement, construction and installation contract for Krafla, which could be worth up to $500 million to Subsea 7.
Project management and engineering will be performed at the company’s offices in Stavanger, Norway and Aberdeen in the UK.
Offshore installation activities for the Krafla project would be scheduled for 2024, 2025 and 2026.
Monica Bjorkmann, vice president for Subsea 7 Norway, said: “This [FEED] award continues our long-standing collaboration with Equinor. The study enables Subsea 7 to engage early in the field development process, optimising design solutions and contributing to the final investment decision,”
“We are delighted to be a trusted partner for Krafla ....and we look forward to working closely with Equinor to successfully deliver our scope with safety and quality at the forefront throughout.”
Equinor and Aker BP in June 2020 agreed on the way forward for the commercial terms for the coordinated development of Krafla, Fulla and North of Alvheim (NOA) licenses on the Norwegian continental shelf.
The area consists of many licenses and complex reservoirs that contain several oil and gas discoveries with total recoverable resources estimated at more than 500 million barrels of oil equivalent, with further exploration and appraisal potential identified.
The planned development concept involves an unmanned production platform to which subsea installations on Krafla, Askja and Sentral will be tied in.
Operations will be run from Equinor’s operations centre at Sandsli in Bergen, which the Norwegian operator earlier said represents a new and important technology development providing a more cost-effective field development solution compared to conventional platform concepts.
The power demand of Krafla and NOA Fulla will be met by power from shore through a subsea power cable from Samnanger in Vestland county.
Norwegian contractor Aibel last November won the FEED contract for the unmanned processing platform for the Krafla field as a follow on from its pre-FEED work that it was awarded in 2020.
Equinor operates the Krafla licence and Aker BP is the operator of the NOA and the Fulla licences.
