Production drilling contracts worth a total of NOK 3.3 billion over four years have been awarded by Statoil to Norway’s Odfjell Drilling Management and Smedvig Offshore companies.
These assignments relate to the Tampen area of the North Sea and the Heidrun field in the Norwegian Sea, and involve work on 10 Statoil-operated platforms.
The jobs have been collected into three contract packages with a firm period of four years and three renewal options, each of two years.
Smedvig has secured the production drilling assignment on Statfjord and Gullfaks in the Tampen area, which is worth NOK 1.7 billion for the firm four-year period.
The other packages have gone to Odfjell for Tampen fields Snorre and Visund and for Heidrun. They are worth NOK 1.2 billion and NOK 450 million respectively for the initial four years.
This is the first time Statoil has awarded drilling jobs of such substantial size, both in terms of scope and duration, at one and the same time.
The contracts embrace about 30 per cent of all production drilling on the Norwegian continental shelf.
“Organising the work in such packages is expected to yield coordination gains through improved utilisation of crews and equipment across fields and platforms,” says Øivind Reinertsen.
He is senior vice president for the Tampen cluster in Statoil’s Exploration & Production Norway business area.
Odfjell’s scope of work includes responsibility for production drilling from four of Statoil’s floating installations - Heidrun, Visund, Snorre A and Snorre B.
Smedvig will be working from fixed platforms on its two fields, which are technologically similar from a drilling perspective for both phase and maturity.
Mr Reinertsen reports that the awards are based on an overall assessment of commercial and technical solutions. Great weight has also been given to health, safety and environmental aspects.
The contracts are subject to approval by the partners in the various licences. They are due to be phased in during the second half of this year.