The expanded facilities at Statoil's Kårstø complex north of Stavanger will soon be ready to start receiving gas from Åsgard in the Norwegian Sea.
This development project has doubled gas reception and treatment capacity at the plant, which is now able to handle roughly 64 million cubic metres per day.
The NOK 10.4 billion bill for the job is within the latest cost estimates.
Only about 10 per cent of system testing remains unfinished, reports Aastein Austerheim, manager for commissioning and operation of the Åsgard facility at Kårstø. And start-up activities are roughly 50 per cent complete.
Plans originally called for first gas to arrive from the Åsgard B platform on 1 September, but this schedule has been hit by strikes and delays.
It has therefore been resolved to use gas flowing into Kårstø through the Statpipe trunkline to commission the Åsgard systems, Mr Austerheim explains.
The Kårstø development project (KUP) embraces more than the new Åsgard receiving station and a plant to extract gas liquids from the rich gas.
In addition, a fractionation plant for separating propane, butanes and naphtha has been completed. So have two large rock caverns for storing propane and a separation/treatment plant for ethane. New jetties are also ready.
Eight million working hours have been devoted to the KUP, turning Kårstø into the world's third largest producer of liquefied petroleum gases (LPGs).