Offshore staff
STAVANGER, Norway -- Statoil has contracted Bergen Group Rosenberg to construct and install a compressor module on the Kvitebjørn platform in the Norwegian North Sea.
The compressor is to help improve recovery and accelerate production at the Kvitebjørn field by reducing wellhead pressure. The project should increase production of gas and condensate from Kvitebjørn by around 35 MMcmoe (22 MMboe), and raise the recovery rate from 55% to 70%.
Statoil adds that the $161-242 million engineering, procurement, construction, installation, and commissioning contract includes an option for tie-in of a condensate pipeline to the Valemon platform, currently in the early days of fabrication.
“The pre-compression project strengthens the Kvitebjørn field as an important producer of gas and a hub for further transport from the field,” says Jannicke Nilsson, senior VP for Operations North Sea in Exploration & Production Norway. “The compression module will also enable us to produce gas and condensate even faster and thus help to maintain Statoil’s current production level.”
The new module will feature a gas-turbine-driven compressor to compress the gas before it is piped to Kollsnes. Construction of the compressor has already started, and offshore installation should take place from 2012 until completion in early 2014.
Without this pressure increase, Statoil says, production from the field would have to be closed down at a much higher wellhead pressure and would decrease from 2013.
“Large modification projects like low pressure production is something we will see more of in the years to come,” adds Vidar Birkeland, Statoil’s acting chief procurement officer at Statoil.
11/29/2010
