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Leading from the Front

Aker Kvaerner’s proven approach to meeting the challenges inherent in large design and construction projects and favoring a comprehensive front-end design phase is being brought to bear to ensure successful delivery of a new semisubmersible platform at the heart of Norway’s Gjøa development.

(By Terry Knott)

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One hundred and one years ago, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen completed his epic Arctic voyage to become the first to navigate the Northwest Passage. The journey took three years for Amundsen and his crew of six to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific, spending long periods locked in ice as they battled through the Canadian Arctic. His vessel, a former herring fishing sloop, weighed 52 tons and measured 69 ft (21 m) long. The vessel’s name was Gjøa. Three years from now – the same duration as Amundsen’s famous journey – another Gjøa “vessel” will come into being. However, similarities with Amundsen’s small herring boat end with the shared name. The Gjøa of 2010 will be a large floating semisubmersible production platform stationed in some 1,210 ft (370 m) of water over an oil and gas field of the same name, lying 28 miles (45 km) off the southwestern coast of Norway.

The Gjøa field – discovered in 1989 and estimated to hold recoverable reserves of 330 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) – is being developed by Statoil, with Gaz de France due to take over as operator when the field comes into production. As a standalone field, Gjøa is classed as economically marginal, but its viability was tipped to the positive side of the scales with the decision to tie back the Vega subsea development – the former Camilla, Belinda and Fram B fields operated by Hydro – to the new production semi, tapping into a further 140 million boe. Up to 13 subsea wells will feed into the semi from the Gjøa field, plus a further three to six from Vega. The result is up to 87,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil will be piped from the production semi to the existing Troll II oil pipeline and on to Norway’s Mongstad refinery, while gas will be sent through the FLAGS pipeline system to St. Fergus in Scotland.

  
Leading from the Front
Leading from the Front
Leading from the Front

The total investment required for the Gjøa development to be onstream by the end of 2010 has been estimated at approximately $4.4 billion. In October 2006, Aker Kvaerner was awarded a $1.3 billion contract by Statoil, covering the design of the Gjøa production semi’s topsides and hull, procurement, construction and hookup of the topsides, and mating of the 22,000-ton topsides deck to the 15,870-ton hull. The contract follows on from Aker Kvaerner completing the front-end engineering design (FEED) for the semi in the fall of 2006. To carry out the extensive scope of work involved, several companies within Aker Kvaerner will work together. Aker Kvaerner Engineering & Technology is responsible for design and procurement, while Aker Kværner Stord will build the 8,380-ton process and 6,615-ton utility modules and complete the overall assembly of the production semi. Aker Kvaerner’s fabrication yard at Egersund will build the 5,510-ton riser module, while all electrical and instrumentation systems will be provided by Aker Kvaerner Elektro. Support for detailed design will come from Aker Kvaerner’s Powergas subsidiary in Mumbai, India. During the peak of fabrication, up to 2,000 people will be working on the project.

Stream of Competence

Continuity of expertise is being employed to good effect on the Gjøa project, where many of the team gained experience on the Kristin project. “The Gjøa and Kristin contracts are similar in that they are both production semis – Gjøa being slightly larger – but they also have some key differences,” notes Lars Eide, Aker Kvaerner’s Project Manager for the Gjøa production semi. “Gjøa is the second field offshore Norway to receive its electrical power from shore. This will come from Mongstad via subsea power cable with a capacity of 40 megawatts. This reduces the number of installed gas turbines on the semi from three to one and will significantly reduce the ‘greenhouse’ emissions from the platform.” “As the whole Gjøa production semi is larger than Kristin to accommodate an increased topsides load, the hull is a further development of the Aker Kvaerner design of the hull for the Snorre B platform, using our proprietary KBE design tool which has given us a head start.”

Enhancing Success

Following eight months of Gjøa FEED work (Kristin was nine months in FEED), detailed design for Gjøa began last October and will run until the summer of 2008. Fabrication will begin in February 2008, demonstrating confidence on Aker Kvaerner’s part that its comprehensive front-end work is highly unlikely to lead to any significant changes during construction.

Aker Kvaerner’s client, operator Statoil, is also focused on the benefits of bringing the learnings from recent projects into the frontend phase of new ventures, as Henning Dale, Statoil’s Project Director for Field Installations on the Gjøa project, explains. “Having individuals and teams that have knowledge and experience from successive projects which they can channel into the front end of a development – combined with the proven management effectiveness of Aker Kvaerner’s PEM – gives us confidence that Gjøa will be successfully delivered for startup in 2010.”
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