Two Norwegian players share helicopters in North Sea to cut costs and emissions

Norwegian oil and gas companies Vår Energi and Equinor have recently started a five-year helicopter-sharing agreement in the North Sea in a push to reduce costs and the environmental footprint of crew transport.

As informed by Vår Energi on Monday, the agreement for assigning helicopters was effective from 1 January 2022 and it follows an earlier helicopter-sharing initiative between the two Norwegian companies in the Barents Sea.

Vår Energi CEO, Torger Rød, commented: “Vår Energi aims to be an active and preferred partner. This includes capturing opportunities for sharing and collaboration to deliver more efficient operations and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for long-term sustainable production of oil and gas from the Norwegian shelf.”

Vår Energi operates 12 regular North Sea flights per week with an average of 180 passengers in total. The company is the operator of the Balder FPU (production vessel) and the Ringhorne platform in the North Sea, as well as for the West Phoenix rig, which is drilling new wells on the Balder Future project.

By coordinating and sharing helicopters and vacant seats, the two Norwegian players seek to optimise the use of the jointly available transport capacity, Vår Energi explained.

Eivind Espe, the Operations Support Manager at Vår Energi, stated: “Safe and efficient transport of personnel to and from the offshore installations is one of the key logistic operations associated with oil and gas production on the Norwegian shelf. Based on the success in the north, it was natural to look at expanding our collaboration – a win-win situation for both operators.”

Vår Energi is also exploring opportunities to establish similar collaborations within other logistics operations, such as supply services and vessel-sharing.