Page 9 - Euroil Week 46 2019

EurOil PROJECTS & COMPANIES EurOil
Equinor deals out $380mn in inspection contracts
NORWAY
Equinor wants to make sure all its onshore and offshore facilities are in good shape.
NORWAY’S Equinor is set to hand out $380mn in contracts for inspection services at its offshore installations on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) and its onshore plants in Norway.
The state oil company announced on Novem- ber 15 it had selected Aker Solutions, Axess, Oceaneering Asset Integrity and IKM Opera- tions to carry out the work, and that frame agree- ments would be signed shortly.
The contracts will take effect on January 1 next year and run for six years, with two four- year extensions possible. Their overall value is just over NOK3.5bn ($380mn), Equinor said.
“The agreements will ensure predictability for both Equinor and the suppliers. They form the basis for a strong long-term collaboration, allowing us to use new technologies, achieve continuous improvement and increase safety and value creation for all parties,” Equinor’s chief procurement officer, Peggy Krantz-Underland, said in a statement.
The aim behind the inspections is to ensure all of Equinor’s installations are in good shape and will continue operating safely, reliably and efficiently. They will pinpoint weaknesses, pre- venting serious damage, using technologies such
as ultrasound, radiography and drones.
“We are already applying advanced ultra- sound methods to reduce radiation from the use of radiography. These are advanced technologies that we expect to be even further developed,” Equinor’s senior vice president for operations technology, Kjetil Hove, said. “It is also exciting to see that drones are to mature from being a niche product to becoming standard deliver- ies within these services. This will benefit our installations, as we will have better methods for
inspecting areas at height.”
Aker Solutions will inspect installations at
the Statfjord, Martin Linge, Oseberg Asgard, Kristin, Heidrun, Njord and Mongstad fields, while Axess will look at facilities at the Gullfaks, Troll, Kvitebjorn, Visund, Grane and Valemon fields. IKM Operations will study installations at the Snorre, Sleipner, Gudrun, Gina Krog, Draupner and Johan Sverdrup fields, and the Tjeldbergodden onshore gas complex. Finally, Oceaneering Asset Integrity will inspect the Norne, Aasta Hansteen and Johan Castberg fields, the Karsto and Kollnes gas processing plants, the Sture oil terminal and the Hammer- fest LNG terminal. ™
Aker to develop subsea CO2 separation
NORWAY
CO2 separation under the sea would help boost recovery at CO2- rich fields.
OSLO-BASED oilfield services group Aker Solutions has teamed up with a group of oil and gas operators to develop subsea CO2 separation, in order to cut recovery costs.
Carbon dioxide re-injection can be used to boost recovery, especially at older oil and gas fields. But currently it can only be separated from other gas in the well-stream at a platform, rather than under the sea, increasing costs and poten- tially making the technique unfeasible.
However, Aker said in a statement on November 15 that it had launched a joint industry project with France’s Total, Indo- nesia’s Pertamina, Norway’s Equinor and industry group CO2 Capture Project (CCP) to identify membrane qualities needed to sep- arate CO2 subsea.
“Flooding an oilfield with CO2 increases recovery rates, and extends the life of an offshore field,” the company explained. “Aker Solutions has developed new concepts for subsea process- ing of well streams from CO2-flooded oilfields, in which CO2-rich gas is separated, compressed and reinjected back into the reservoir. The
hydrocarbon-enriched gas can then be routed to the topside production facility.”
In order for gas separation to be technically and economically viable, it needs to be carried out using robust membranes that limit pretreat- ment requirements and remove the need for large processing plants, Aker said.
The existing operating range for membrane materials is not ideal for gas separation on the seabed, the company said. Therefore tests will be undertaken on different membrane qualities under various pressure, temperature, gas com- position and production rate conditions. They will be carried out by the SINTEF research insti- tute in Norway.
The test results will be used in technical and economic engineering studies to evaluate the concept for offshore enhanced oil recovery (EOR) with CO2 re-injection and storage.
Aker delivered the world’s first subsea gas compression system to Equinor for the offshore Asgard field in Norway in 2015. There has been no unscheduled downtime since the system was launched. ™
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