A frame agreement with Bredero Shaw covering corrosion and weight coating of pipelines has been extended after Statoil exercised an option to lengthen the contract by two years.
The group is about to send a formal request to Bredero for coating work on the Snøhvit and Ormen Lange pipelines in the Barents and Norwegian Seas respectively.
These jobs are expected to be worth just above NOK 1 billion over the next two years, with roughly 90 per cent of that amount relating to the Ormen Lange line.
“Corrosion and weight coating for this pipeline will be a major and important assignment,” says Odd Kristian Nøland, head of procurement for the project execution unit in Exploration & Production Norway.
Bredero’s coating yard at Farsund in southern Norway was established when Statoil had a substantial portfolio of pipelaying projects.
Following the completion of a number of developments, however, the basis for maintaining this facility no longer existed. It is currently on a care and maintenance basis.
But the frame agreement with Bredero has been retained, and covers both the Farsund yard and a similar British unit at Leith in Scotland.
The Ormen Lange contract cannot be awarded until the partnership has formally sanctioned this development.
Statoil is collaborating with operator Norsk Hydro on the pipeline project, which ranks as the biggest on the Norwegian continental shelf with an overall length of 1,200 kilometres.