GALLERY: Aibel loads out second module for Johan Sverdrup drilling platform

Oil services company Aibel has completed and loaded out the Johan Sverdrup drilling support module (DSM) onto a barge that will carry the module to Klosterfjorden later this month.

Aibel said that the 8,000-tonne heavy DSM was rolled out of the North Sea Hall in Haugesund and loaded onto the barge last Saturday.

After the module reaches Klosterfjorden, the DSM will be connected with the other two modules which together comprise the drilling platform for the Johan Sverdrup field.

The company completed and delivered the main support frame (MSF) for the platform earlier this month from its yard in Laem Chabang, Thailand. The MSF was the yard’s largest individual delivery to date, weighing in at 10,800 tonnes and the size of a football field.

Apart from the DSM and the MSF, the Johan Sverdrup drilling platform will consist of the drilling equipment set (DES) module, being built by Aibel’s collaboration partner Nymo in Grimstad.

According to Aibel’s statement from Monday, the module will lie alongside the quay in Haugesund, where it will be cleaned and welded onto the barge. Two large pedestals will also be lifted on board before the module heads towards Klosterfjorden by the end of the month.

As far as the remaining parts of the project go, the Johan Sverdrup field recently got its first part that is visible above the sea, which is the jacket for the Johan Sverdrup riser platform. The jacket weighs 26,000 tonnes and is the largest on the Norwegian continental shelf.

The largest jacket on the NCS was built at Kværner’s shipyard in Verdal. The same company will build two of the three remaining Johan Sverdrup jackets meant for the drilling and processing platforms. Dragados Offshore was put in charge of building the fourth jacket, for the utility and accommodation platform.

Johan Sverdrup field

Statoil is the operator of the Johan Sverdrup development with a working interest of 40.0267 percent. The license partners are Lundin Norway, Petoro, Aker BP, and Maersk Oil with 22.6, 17.36, 11.5733, and 8.44 percent interests, respectively.

The Plan for Development and Operation for Johan Sverdrup Phase 1 was approved by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy on August 20, 2015. The first phase is currently estimated at NOK 99 billion ($12.3 billion), a reduction of NOK 24 billion ($3 billion) since the PDO was submitted.

Gross resources for the entire field are estimated to between two and three billion barrels of oil equivalent making it one of the five largest fields ever discovered on the NCS. It is estimated that, once the field reaches the expected plateau rate of 660,000 barrels per day, production from the field will amount to about 25 percent of total Norwegian oil production.