North Sea subsea tie-back job enables Ocean Installer to handle ‘key component’ for FPSO’s life extension

Norway-based marine construction and operations player Ocean Installer, part of the Moreld Group, has been hired to handle a subsea tie-back project to an existing floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel operating in the North Sea, as part of a new frame agreement for offshore construction.

Thanks to the contract for the Teal West subsea tie-back project with Anasuria Hibiscus UK, the firm’s scope of work entails the installation of manifold, flowlines, umbilicals, the associate risers and tie-ins, and protection for all. Ocean Installer underlines that this deal, which it describes as “sizeable” without providing its value, is “a key step” towards extending the production lifespan of the FPSO Anasuria deployed at the Anasuria cluster.

Anasuria Operating Company (AOC), a UK-based jointly controlled firm by Ping Petroleum and Hibiscus Petroleum’s Anasuria Hibiscus UK, acts as the installation and pipeline operator for the vessel and cluster. The FPSO Anasuria is roughly 4 km southeast of the proposed Teal West drill center and 127 km east of Aberdeen, Scotland. After being installed and commissioned in 1996, the Guillemot A, Cook, Teal, and Teal South fields were tied back to the FPSO.

Kevin Murphy, Ocean Installer’s CEO, remarked: “I’m very pleased to see that Hibiscus are entrusting Ocean Installer with the Teal West project which is a key component of the life extension for the Anasuria FPSO. This project has a number of complexities that play to our strengths in executing complex marine operations.”

The engineering works for the FPSO subsea tie-back are expected to start immediately with offshore operations planned for fall 2025. Hughes Subsea, an OEG Group company, was picked in 2023 to provide daughter-craft diving services to the FPSO, a year after Anasuria Operating Company became the installation and pipeline operator.

Located approximately 155 km northeast of Peterhead and 87 km west of the UK-Norway median, at a water depth of 90 meters, the Teal West oilfield lies in the production license P2535 in the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) Block 21/24d of the Central North Sea.

Gregor Scott, Ocean Installer’s UK Managing Director, commented: “This award is testament to the collaborative approach inherent to Ocean Installer and the competence in our organisation to execute these types of scopes and we thank Hibiscus for the opportunity to work together on their first North Sea development.

“With the project being executed from our Aberdeen office we are looking to prioritise local suppliers to support the project. We have experienced significant growth over the past year and are pleased to add Teal West to the project portfolio.”

The North Sea subsea tie-back project comes several months after Ocean Installer, in consortium with Oceaneering, won a deal with TotalEnergies to execute the transportation and installation work of the Girassol Life Extension (GIR FLEX) project, which will extend the life of another FPSO working on Block 17 in Angola to 2031.

Before this, the company and Petro Services secured another contract with TotalEnergies for umbilical recovery and reinstallation activities on the FPSO Pazflor.

Recently, Ocean Installer landed an engineering, procurement, construction, and installation (EPCI) contract with Equinor to deliver a subsea scope for its huge oil and natural gas field in the Norwegian North Sea.