Statoil's Gullfaks C platform in the North Sea will stop production on Sunday 15 October for a two-week turnaround.
Some 31,000 hours will be worked during the shutdown, of which 21,000 will be for the Gullfaks Satellites phase II project. Welding and other hot work will be the main jobs for the project. In addition, modification and maintenance will be performed for the Gullfaks operations organisation.
Roughly 360 people are being mobilised for the turnaround. During normal operations there are between 150 and 180 people on board.
Norvald Henjum who is in charge of coordinating the shutdown, says that the goal is to reduce the frequency of regular turnarounds to every second year, in line with other Statoil-operated fields.
"Our aim is that 2000 will be the last year when we arrange annual turnarounds. But exceptions could still occur as a result of special tie-in or modification projects that require shutdown," says Mr Henjum.
The background for the change in turnaround frequency is mainly that extensive parts of the old carbon steel pipe systems in the processing facilities have been replaced with better materials that require less maintenance, according to Mr Henjum. In the past few years, several hundred million kroner have been spent on such replacing.
A new turnaround is planned for Gullfaks C in March next year, in connection with the satellite project. There are no turnarounds planned for the Gullfaks A or B platforms in 2001.
Just over 175,000 barrels of oil per day currently pass through the Gullfaks C platform. Almost 80,000 barrels of this come from the Tordis field which is operated by Norsk Hydro.