Offshore staff
LYSAKER, Norway – Aker BP has entered a swap agreement with PGNiG Upstream Norway concerning two Norwegian offshore licenses.
The company plans to trade its 3.3% stake in the Equinor-operated Gina Krog field, and an 11.9175% interest in Norwegian Sea license PL127C, in exchange gaining a 5% interest and operatorship in PL 838 in the same region, plus cash.
PL 838 contains PGNiG’s recent Shrek discovery, close to the Aker BP-operated Skarv field. The deal and transfer of operatorship should facilitate an efficient development of Shrek via a tieback to the Skarv FPSO, Aker BP said, adding that the license has further exploration potential.
Within PL127C are the Alve Nord discovery and the Alve NE prospect, also close to Skarv. The company plans to drill an exploration well on this license later in the year.
The company expects to net up to $62 million from the deal, including $11 million contingent on a development of Alve Nord.
On completion, the company will hold 35% of PL838 and 88.0825% of PL127C.
In addition, the company announced a strategic initiative with Cognite to investigate how robotics systems could make its offshore operations safer and more efficient.
Cognite, an AI software-as-a-service (SaaS) specialist, will collaborate with Aker BP on various tests this year involving deployments of robots and drones on the Skarv FPSO.
The robotics systems will be tested to determine their suitability for autonomous inspection, data capture, and automatic report generation. Tasks may include aerial and underwater inspections, response to leaks, performing work in areas considered hazardous, and providing onshore operators with a ‘telepresence’ on offshore installations.
Equipment to be trialled will include the Spot quadruped robot developed by Boston Dynamics. Cognite and Aker BP have tested the robots in simulated oil and gas environments to ensure that it can reach locations said to be too difficult to access through traditional automation.
Cognite Data Fusion (CDF), a cloud-based industrial data operations and intelligence platform, will serve as the data infrastructure for the initiative.
CDF is said to contextually enrich industrial data, providing an open, unified industrial data model that can be easily accessed by humans and applications, leading to improved analytical operations and data-driven decisions.
Cognite CEO Dr John Markus Lervik said: “By ingesting data collected by robots into Cognite Data Fusion, Aker BP engineers will be able to see it in context with data from across the company’s operations and make data-driven decisions that improve efficiency and safety.”
02/11/2020
