Aasta Hansen

Good news from the far North: the large-scale project Aasta Hansteen develops very positive. In the past few months, there have been two further discoveries of natural gas in this region and now one of the biggest pipe-laying vessels in the world started its journey to build the Polarled. It will transport the gas from Aasta Hansen and the neighboring discoveries to the Norwegian west coast starting in 2017. Since September 2014, Wintershall has been a shareholder in the Aasta Hansteen development project, neighboring licenses and Polarled.

The 480-kilometer-long Polarled will be the deepest pipeline in its order of magnitude. With a diameter of 90 centimeters (36 inches), Polarled will be laid on a maximum water depth of 1,265 meters. The pipeline is designed to transport up to 70 million cubic meters of gas per day. Until August of this year the pipeline will be laid, then the first gas is set to flow to Nyhamna facility in 2017.

Aasta Hansteen is one of the largest and most complex industrial projects in the whole of Europe and - like the neighboring licenses - has enormous potential natural resources. However, there is virtually no infrastructure available in this part of the Norwegian Sea in order to transport the gas to the mainland. The construction of the infrastructure is of major strategic importance for the future development of the region.

The project planning is also far-sighted: to allow the infrastructure to be expanded any time, by now gadgets are applied to connect other fields to the pipeline easily at a later time. This foresight has already proven worthwhile as the further discoveries in the Snefrid license (Wintershall 24%) and "Roald Rygg prospect" (Wintershall 10%) show recently. The neighboring concession Asterix (Wintershall 19%) also shows enormous potential.

Tags: Wintershall