Offshore staff
BERGEN, Norway – Statoil has opened its onshore control room for the North Sea Valemon platform, the first in the company’s portfolio to be remotely operated from land.
“We have had land-based surveillance and control of offshore operations for a long time, however, the remote control of Valemon marks one important step forward on our digitalization journey,” said Gunnar Nakken, head of Statoil’s operations west cluster.
The Valemon platform was designed and constructed for future remote control. Based on this experience, Statoil will consider a similar arrangement for other new projects.
“Most of our production will still be carried out on large, manned platforms, such asAasta Hansteen and the Johan Sverdrup platform,” Nakken said, “but for somewhat smaller platforms and fields it will absolutely be considered. First, we must gain experience from Valemon.”
TheValemon field came onstream in 2015, 30 years after its discovery. Its produced condensate is piped to the Kvitebjørn platform for processing and from there to the refinery at Mongstad. The gas is piped to the Heimdal platform for processing and from there to the European market.
Current expected lifespan is until 2023.
11/10/2017
