Canadian oil company EnCana Corp. has hired Aker Solutions to move and install wellhead protection structures at the Deep Panuke development offhsore Nova Scotia, Canada.

Aker Solutions’s marine operations president, Torgeir Ramstad, confirmed Canada was a tough market for Europe-based suppliers and called the contract “an entry into the eastern Canadian market for subsea installations.”

Aker Solutions business Aker Marine Contractors has begun engineering the offshore operations due to start in the second half of 2009.

A company source told Scandoil.com that the company has prequalified a number of subsea suppliers, but that "the list is not complete."

"What we need is ROVs for survey and positioning, we may need pile-driving and perhaps trenching and seabed levelling," the source said, adding that steel fabrication and weather services were also still up for grabs.

"The scope of the job has changed and could change again," he said.

No contract amounts were disclosed.

EnCana is flush with $2.8 billion in cash after a successful third quarter. But the Deep Panuke project it operates 250 kilometres offshore Eastern Canada requires capital-intensive suppliers and is a challenge for heavy lifts. Local seas are the most unforgiving in the world with extreme wave heights, icebergs and the meeting of arctic and Gulf of Mexico weather systems.

Single Buoy Moorings is in charge of a field design aimed at producing 300 million cubic feet per day of gasof sales gas by 2010.

Tags: Aker Marine Contractors