Statoil, a Norwegian oil and gas company, has chosen a consortium led by General Electric (GE) Water & Process Technologies and Halvorsen TEC to supply a complete seawater sulphate removal unit (SRU) to help protect Statoil’s production wells in the Johan Castberg project in the Barents Sea, off Norway, about 100 kilometres north of the Snøhvit field.
Engineers from GE Water & Process Technologies and Halvorsen TEC will be responsible for the front-end engineering design (FEED) work, and will work closely with Aker Solutions and Statoil. Work is expected to go out in 2017, when the final investment decision for the project is planned to be carried out. This is GE’s very first order for its seawater sulphate removal technology for the offshore oil and gas industry, as well as the first time GE and Halvorsen TEC have been jointly awarded an order for a complete SRU. Historically, the companies have always had a long-standing business relationship and have collaborated numerous times on multiple offshore oil and gas projects.
“We are pleased to collaborate with GE on the SRU project to help Statoil protect its wells in the Johan Castberg field,” Managing Director of Halvorsen TEC, a subsidiary of Halvorsen Group AS, Svein Helge Pettersen, said. “We will be able to utilise our extensive engineering and fabrication capabilities in Norway to perform a majority of the SRU work and support the local economy. Components also will be sourced from Norway whenever possible.”
“As offshore exploration and production moves to deeper waters, operators must protect their assets to maximise their return on investment,” President and CEO of GE Water & Process Technologies Heiner Markhoff, said. “Sulphate removal is important to help ensure that production assets remain free of barium and strontium scale, which would precipitate if untreated seawater is injected. GE is teaming up with Halvorsen TEC to showcase how SRU technology can help Statoil and other oil and gas producers reduce their costs in increasingly tough-to-treat conditions.”
