Offshore staff
OSLO, Norway – Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) Norway has approved ExxonMobil’s request to extend the lifetime of the subsea facilities at the Sigyn field in the North Sea.
Sigyn is a gas and condensate field 12 km (7.5 mi) southeast of Sleipner Øst in a water depth of around 70 m (229 ft).
Production started in 2012: the wellstream is piped through two lines to the Sleipner A platform.
Originally, production was expected to cease this year, but new calculations show that it can be sustained for a further five years.
The consent, which runs until end-December 2022, applies to the subsea equipment, the associated wells, pipelines and control cables for managing and monitoring the wells.
PSA has also authorized programs this year byAker BP, ExxonMobil, Gassco, and Statoil involving manned underwater operations.
Statoil has signed framework agreements with Technip Norge and Subsea 7 Norway. The other three operators wish to make use of the same arrangements via a Pool Agreement.
Technip will perform its manned underwater operations from the DSVDeep Arctic and the light diving craft (LDC) Technip Seahunter, with the newbuild DSV Deep Explorer participating during the second half of the year.
However, Statoil must notify the PSA before this vessel is deployed.
Subsea 7 will allocate its DSVsSeven Falcon, Seven Atlantic and Pelican and the LDC Seven Spray for its campaign.
This includes defined tasks connected with the repair of corrosion damage to caissons at Oseberg Sør in the North Sea (to be performed from theSeven Spray) and various undefined operational and project activities that may be required on the companies’ various production licenses and pipeline systems, including pipelines on foreign shelves under Norwegian jurisdiction.
The framework agreements also take in emergency repair response for underwater installations and pipelines. PSA must be informed in advance if situations of this nature arise that require manned underwater operations.
Aker BP has signed a separate agreement with Subsea 7 for underwater activities in the Alvheim area, Ula and Tambar of the North Sea, and has applied for consent for all of these.
Statoil’s application features one program concerning diving in the 180-225 m (590-738 ft) water depth range. In this case, the company must provide PSA with supplementary documentation before the authorities can complete handling of the consent application.
02/27/2017
