Statoil steering more offshore operations to onshore centers
Offshore staff
STAVANGER, Norway – Statoil has committed to establishing two new centers in Bergen for drilling operations and integrated operations support.
These will help the company achieve its goals of increasing value from its operated fields offshore Norway by more than $2 billion pre-tax between 2020 and 2025.
From this year onwards, both centers will gradually be connected to all the company’s installations on the Norwegian continental shelf, and between now and 2020, the company plans to spend NOK1-2 billion ($128-255 million) on digital technology to improve its operations.
Last December Statoil opened an operations support center in the US, which is currently monitoring its 1,100-plus onshore wells.
“In new field developments oil and gas production will to an increasing extent be carried out from unmanned, robotized, standardized, and remote-controlled installations,” said COO Jannicke Nilsson.
“Many operations will be carried out by fewer risk-exposed working situations. We will be able to control the maintenance work in a better way and improve safety and operational quality,” she added.
Through interdisciplinary collaboration and better use of operating data and digital technologies, the centers should improve operation and maintenance work on Statoil’s platforms, added Kjetil Hove, the company’s head of operations technology on the NCS.
“Our main goal is to operate our installations safely and optimally every single day, and to identify challenges and prevent shut-down before they occur.”
The first fields to be connected to the integrated ops facility will be Gina Krog and Grane in the North Sea and Åsgard in the Norwegian Sea.
The drilling center will target more cost-effective and better geoscience support for drilling operations, as monitoring and control of offshore well path drilling will be moved from offshore installations to a joint geoscience operations center.
It will also lead to cost savings due to a reduced need for transport and offshore stays. The drilling center should be ready to support its first operations this fall.
03/09/2018
