North Sea oil and gas, wind platforms line up at Aibel yard

Shell’s Penguins FPSO, built in China, reached the yard last year where it is undergoing completion and commissioning. It will host production from the redeveloped Penguins area of the northern UK North Sea.

The 80-m tall, 23,000-metric ton, 900-MW capacity DolWin epsilon platform will convert alternating current from three wind farms in the DolWin cluster in the German North Sea to high-voltage direct current. The power will then be exported to mainland Germany.

Aibel also supplied the DolWin beta offshore wind platform, which has been operating in this sector since 2015. TenneT is the operator, and Aibel/Seatrium have worked jointly on the new platform with Hitachi Energy.

Finally, the 1,200-MW Dogger Bank B platform is 40 m tall and weighs 7,000 mt. It is the second of three offshore wind platforms Aibel is supplying to Equinor, SSE Renewables and Vårgrønn for the Dogger Bank development in the UK southern North Sea, which will eventually have a capacity of up to 3.6 GW.

Aside from these three structures, the construction hall at Haugesund has modules that will provide the Equinor-operated Oseberg Field in the North Sea with power from shore.  A new compressor module is also under construction to increase Oseberg’s gas exports.

In the shipbuilding hall, a new module is under construction for installation on the Aasta Hansteen spar platform in the Norwegian Sea to receive production from the deepwater Irpa tieback.

“We are working on a large number of projects at the same time, and there is a total weight of 70,000 mt at the yard,” said Lars Inge Hellestveit, vice president of yard operations.

Aker BP’s unmanned production platform Munin, also assigned to Aibel, will provide more of the activity at the yard. The 8,000-mt facility, due to be completed in 2026, is one of three new platforms ordered for the Yggdrasil project in the North Sea.

The Dogger Bank C converter platform will arrive in Haugesund in early summer, after the Dogger Bank B facility has left the yard.

Once Dogger Bank C departs the yard, the two wind converter platforms Aibel is building for Ørsted for the Hornsea 3 project in the UK North Sea will move in for final completion and outfitting of Hitachi Energy’s HVDC technology. 

Both are under construction at present in the company’s yard in Thailand. 

03.21.2024