The six production wells on Statoil's abandoned Tommeliten field in the North Sea are to be plugged by Coflexip Stena Offshore Norge.
This work begins next week from the special CSOSeawell vessel, and is expected to take about three weeks to complete.
It marks the first use off Norway of a light intervention ship instead of a mobile rig to plug abandoned production wells.
The job involves installing the necessary barriers between the reservoir 3,000 metres down and the seabed, explains Øyvind A Dahl-Stamnes, manager for the new opportunities in licences south sector.
That will be followed by the retrieval of all the Xmas trees on the wells. Efforts will be made to sell these for re-use.
Statoil intends to use a mobile rig for the final part of the plugging operation, which involves cutting and pulling production tubing and casing.
Plugs will also be set in the topmost part of the production wells before the six-slot template is retrieved. A contract for this part of the work has yet to be placed.
Located in block 1/9 south-west of Phillips Petroleum's Ekofisk field, Tommeliten yielded some 11 billion cubic metres of gas and almost 19 million barrels of oil between 1988 and 1998.
This is the first Statoil field on the Norwegian continental shelf to be shut in and plugged.