Statoil has awarded to Aker Solutions Marulk tie-in to the floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel Norne. Aker Solutions estimates the value of the work to be approximately NOK 120 million.

"This award falls within our core business and strategic objective of pursuing more advanced and complex modification projects in addition to the smaller modifications included in the frame agreements recently awarded by Statoil. It also confirms our position as a strong service provider within the modification business in Mid Norway", says Stian Vemmestad, president of maintenance, modifications and operations in Aker Solutions.

Aker Solutions is currently working on many projects to exploit the capacity of existing infrastructure to bring in new and smaller fields. Marulk tie-in to Norne falls in to line of a series of tie-in projects connected to Norne FPSO.

The Marulk field is located in the Norwegian Sea approximately 30 kilometers southwest of the Norne field at a water depth of 365 meters in the PL122. The initial development will consist of two wells tied back to the Norne FPSO, the northernmost production facility on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS).

The scope of the project is to facilitate Norne FPSO for installation and start-up of the Marulk template. The execution phase is based on a front end engineering design (FEED) study performed by Aker Solutions. In order to accommodate for a tie-back of Marulk at Norne topside a new flowline will be hooked up to both the production and the test manifold.

The Marulk Tie-in to Norne is an amendment to an existing modifications contract Aker Solutions has with Statoil for Norne. Work under the contract starts immediately and the project will be completed in March 2012.

The project will be managed out of Aker Solutions' regional office in Trondheim.

The contract parties are Aker Solutions' subsidiary Aker Offshore Partner AS and Statoil Petroleum AS.

Statoil ASA as operator for PL 128 is performing the Topside Modification work on Norne as part of the agreement between PL 128 and PL 122. ENI Norge is operator on PL 122

Tags: Aker Solutions, Statoil