Offshore staff
DELFT, the Netherlands – Allseas’ Pioneering Spirit has installed the 25,000-metric ton (27,558-ton) topsides for the new P2 processing platform at the Johan Sverdrup field development in the Norwegian North Sea.
The vessel placed the topsides on the pre-installed jacket in a single-lift operation, and will later install a new 95-m (311 ft) bridge connecting P2 to the adjacent (existing) riser platform.
P2 is the fifth platform at the field center, and the fourth transported and installed by Allseas.
Following initial preparations, the lift/setdown operation took 3 hr to complete, one of the quickest ever for a large, fully completed topsides, Allseas claimed.
Sverdrup operator Equinor and its partners have worked with Allseas over the past three years to prepare P2 for the lift.
The offshore program started with towing of the topsides from Aibel Haugesund, western Norway, to Digernessundet, Stord, followed by transfer from the barge to the waiting Pioneering Spirit for transport to the field center, 140 km (87 mi) west of Stavanger.
When the new platform starts operating later this year, production capacity at Sverdrup should rise to around 720,000 b/d.
According to Allseas, Equinor has estimated that use of the vessel during the first phase of the development helped cut more than 1 million man-hours offshore. This led to start-up three to six months earlier than would have been possible with the alternative topside installation solution, cutting costs by almost NOK1 billion ($112 million).
3/16/2022
