Equinor enters subsea pact with Aker Solutions and TechnipFMC

Oil major Equinor has signed collaboration agreements with Aker Solutions and TechnipFMC for subsea equipment and services on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS) and internationally.

Equinor said on Wednesday that the subsea segment has been central in developing the company and the NCS for the past several decades.

The company added that it was operating close to 600 subsea wells, which account for a considerable share of the company’s total production.

Margareth Øvrum, Equinor’s executive vice president for technology, projects, and drilling, said: “We are building on many years of good cooperation with two world-leading suppliers in the subsea segment. Together with TechnipFMC and Aker Solutions, we aim to further develop current solutions and keep up the pressure on continuous improvements that enables future profitable projects.”

The improvement effort throughout the industry over the past few years enabled Equinor to sanction projects that previously could not have been realized.

In 2017, Equinor and its partners sanctioned projects for more than NOK 90 billion on the NCS. Subsea procurements for the Johan Castberg, Snorre Expansion, Askeladd, and Troll Phase 3 projects accounted for a third of the global market last year.

In December of the same year, the company entered into several framework agreements with TechnipFMC and Aker Solutions for the delivery of subsea equipment and services.

Through the new collaboration agreements, the three companies are establishing a framework to ensure continuous improvements.

Two separate agreements have been signed with identical objectives. The work will focus on improvements in safety, quality, cost, and technology from concept through project execution and subsea operations services.

In a separate announcement, TechnipFMC said that the agreement with Equinor covers the full scope of TechnipFMC’s products and services.

TechnipFMC added that the agreement builds on the recent successes of the company’s integrated EPCI delivery on the Trestakk and Visund Nord projects to Equinor.

Doug Pferdehirt, CEO of TechnipFMC, said: “We are extremely honored to extend our partnership with Equinor globally while enabling a new way of working together, from early engagement through integrated project execution – leveraging next-generation technology and digitalization.”

Also on Monday, Aker Solutions said that several innovative and cost-efficient solutions materialized from Aker Solutions’ and Equinor’s history of collaboration.

Aker Solutions’ newest subsea production system with vertical trees was adopted on the Johan Castberg field and Equinor would use the same design on its Troll and Askeladd fields.

Luis Araujo, CEO of Aker Solutions, said: “Aker Solutions and Equinor’s ongoing collaboration has consistently generated mutually beneficial technology developments, working process simplifications and standardizations. This agreement formalizes the companies’ joint ambitions of achieving efficiency and improvement goals.”