Offshore staff
OSLO, Norway -- Installation of Ormen Lange's gas pipelines in the North Sea brought together several of the largest pipelay vessels available. Currently, Solitaire and S7000 are working 100 km off Romsdal, western Norway.
Pipelaying here is difficult because of the depths, uneven sea floor, strong currents, subzero temperatures, high winds and waves.
Allseas'Solitaire completed running two production pipelines from onshore at Nyhamna to Ormen Lange. For work on the Storegga slide area, 100 km offshore, Saipem's S7000 takes over to lay the remaining 20 km of pipe.
The well templates are at 850 m depth.
The survey vesselGeobay will assist installing the pipelines. Subsea 7's Skandi Neptune finished placing the 120-km long control cable from a single carousel. The antifreeze pipes were completed this week by the Acergy-owned Seaway Falcon. Geofjord and Edda Freya are embedding these pipelines with the help of remote operated vehicles, while Geosund and Geobay conduct seabed mapping and verification work.
Between them,Tertnes and Nordnes from Van Oord will install over 3 million metric tons of stones to support the pipelines.
8/7/06
