Offshore staff

HAMILTON, Bermuda -- BG Norge has contracted Teekay to provide a turret-moored FPSO for the Knarr oil and gas field development in the Norwegian North Sea.

The newbuild FPSO will be constructed by Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea, with a fully built-up project cost of around $1 billion.

The floater, which will have production capacity of 63,000 b/d, should be delivered late in 2014, ready to start a firm charter contract with BG of either six or 10 years, extendable to 20 years. BG has until end- 2012 to decide on the firm period.

Knarr (ex-Jordbaer) is in the Tampen area of the Norwegian northern North Sea. Its estimated recoverable reserves of 70 MMboe could rise, depending on the results of drilling of nearby prospects.

Peter Evensen, Teekay’s president and CEO, said. “The Knarr FPSO design, which makes use of Samsung’s previous experience in delivering turnkey FPSO units, incorporates topside configuration designed for high uptime, and the turret mooring system is a proprietary technology we jointly developed with Framo.

“Over the past several months, we have been working together with Samsung and other key suppliers on the detailed engineering specifications for the FPSO, prior to finalizing the contracts with both Samsung and BG.”

BG operates Knarr, in partnership with Idemitsu Petroleum Norge, Wintershall Norge, and RWE Dea Norge.

07/07/2011