Heerema completes Vestflanken 2 platform construction. Sends topside, jacket to Norway

Heerema Fabrication Group has completed the construction of  the topside for the Oseberg Vestflanken 2 Unmanned Wellhead Platform with the sail away ceremony held on Sunday, June 25. The jacket followed on Monday, June 26.

Statoil awarded Heerema the contract for the engineering, construction, transport, and installation of the platform in February 2016. Fabrication started in June that year, at the Zwijndrecht yard, in the Netherlands.

Within a year, the company completed the construction of the 25 meters long, 900 tonnes heavy topside, and a 138 meters tall jacket with a foot print of 36 x 36 meters, weighing 4,400 tonnes.

Heerema Marine Contractors (HMC) is responsible for the execution of the transportation to the offshore location and will also perform the installation with HMC’s SSCV Hermod in the Oseberg area in the Norwegian part of the North Sea, about 130 kilometers north-west of Bergen.

 “We are proud of what we have accomplished for Statoil,” said Koos-Jan van Brouwershaven, CEO of HFG. “Our design of an unmanned wellhead platform with no facilities, helicopter deck or lifeboats represents a new solution with great possibilities. It meets the challenges of lower investment costs and higher efficiency requirements.”

Final destination of the Oseberg Vestflanken 2 Unmanned Wellhead Platform is the Norwegian part of the North Sea, approximately 8 kilometers northwest of the Oseberg Field Centre.

It is the first of three planned phases for developing the remaining reserves in the Oseberg area. The Oseberg Vestflanken Development consists of an unmanned wellhead platform with 10 well slots. Two existing subsea wells will also be reused.

The well stream will be routed to the Oseberg Field Centre via a new pipeline, and the wells will be remote-controlled from the Field Centre. The field development will provide 110 million barrels of oil equivalent. Production start is scheduled for the second quarter of 2018.