Offshore staff
TREVOSE, Pennsylvania – Statoil has contracted a consortium led by GE Water & Process Technologies and Halvorsen TEC to supply a seawater sulfate removal unit (SRU).
This will help protect production wells at theJohan Castberg project, 100 km (62 mi) north of the Snøhvit field in the Norwegian Barents Sea. Statoil and its partners are due to take a final investment decision on Castberg later this year.
GE and Halvorsen are working on front-end engineering and design (FEED) with Aker Solutions and Statoil. This is GE’s first order for its seawater sulfate removal technology for the offshore oil and gas industry, and its first complete SRU contract in partnership with Halvorsen.
The FEED should last six months, with equipment – mostly fabricated by Halvorsen in Norway – likely to be delivered during mid-2019, ahead of first oil in 2022.
The SRU will allow Statoil to inject around 2,000 cu m/hr (70,629 cu ft/hr) of seawater with fewer than 20 parts per million of sulfate content and fewer than 20 parts per billion of oxygen.
The system’s injection capacity will be 1,188 cu m/hr (41,954 cu ft/hr) at 6 bar (87 psi), with the package including:
- GE’s seawater sulfate-reducing nanofiltration membranes, designed to eliminate nearly all sulfates from injection seawater and remove divalent ions from the seawater to prevent barium and calcium scale formation, while leaving monovalent ions such as sodium and chloride to pass through the membranes.
- GE’s ZeeWeed 700B horizontal ultrafiltration system, used widely in the desalination industry, which is said to provide superior fine solids removal.
- Deoxygenation membrane technology from 3M.
- Full single-lift SRU.
In addition, GE is providing the process guarantee for the entire unit and an onboard service package with remote monitoring of the entire seawater injection plant. The company will also deploy analytics and process specialists to theCastberg FPSO’s SRU to ensure stable and optimal performance.
Svein Helge Pettersen, managing director of Halvorsen TEC, said: “We will be able to utilize our extensive engineering and fabrication capabilities in Norway to perform a majority of the SRU work and support the local economy. Components also will be sourced from Norway whenever possible.”
Heiner Markhoff, president and CEO of GE Water & Process Technologies, added: “Sulfate removal is important to help ensure that production assets remain free of barium and strontium scale, which would precipitate if untreated seawater is injected.
“GE is teaming up with Halvorsen TEC to showcase how SRU technology can help Statoil and other oil and gas producers reduce their costs in increasingly tough-to-treat conditions.”
04/26/2017
