A contract worth some NOK 230 million to install recovery plants for volatile organic compounds (VOC) on three shuttle tankers has been awarded to the Navion shipping company.
Placed by Statoil in partnership with the other companies in the VOC industrial partnership, the deal also includes options for a further two facilities.
âThese plants allow us to meet government demands for a 70 per cent cut in environmentally-harmful VOC emissions from 2005,â says special adviser Egil Tveit in Exploration & Production Norway.
Environmental regulations also require the amount of VOC released during offshore loading on the Norwegian continental shelf to be reduced by 95 per cent from 2006.
Due to come into operation next year, the new recovery facilities will be installed on Navion Scandia, Navion Hispania and Nordic Stavanger.
The contract to build these plants has been awarded by Navion to Hamworthy KSE Gas Systems AS.
Through the VOC partnership, which is chaired by Statoil, 25 oil companies have taken a collective effort to cut VOC emissions from NCS fields.
The technology chosen combines a condensation unit with steam boilers, which will reduce VOC emissions during loading operations to zero.
Seven VOC recovery plants are currently installed in shuttle tankers operating on the NCS, while an eighth is under installation.