The President of the United States signed into law the omnibus spending bill for Fiscal Year 2021, which included funding for four more Sentinel-class Fast Response Cutters (FRC), allowing Bollinger to build and deliver four more FRCs to the United States Coast Guard. This increases the total number of funded boats to 64.

On behalf of TechnipFMC, Jumbo Offshore successfully completed the first phase of work on Energean’s Karish gas field offshore Israel in October.

AqualisBraemar ASA (“AqualisBraemar”) has successfully completed the acquisition of 100 percent of the shares in LOC Group, thereby creating an even more complete service provider to the upstream oil and gas industry.

Donation of multibeam technology and support strengthens hydrographic research capabilities of university’s new dedicated survey vessel

The Covid-19 pandemic has devastated crude and condensate demand in 2021, creating massive supply surpluses and filling up inventories, causing producers to slash output in order to keep prices at somewhat profitable levels. Rystad Energy’s latest balances, however, show that 2021 could offer producers a window of opportunity, as monthly supply deficits may reach their highest level in years.

Equinor and its license partners have decided to invest NOK 3 billion in the North Sea Statfjord Øst field to improve recovery by 23 million barrels of oil equivalent.

Written notification of material changes to the Plan for Development and Operation Statfjord Øst was submitted to the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy 16.12.2020.

“The decision to improve recovery on Statfjord Øst will add considerable value to society and owners and will create positive effects for suppliers. Our ambition is to maintain safe and profitable production and secure valuable activity from the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS) for several decades,” says Kjetil Hove, Equinor’s senior vice president for Field Life eXtension (FLX).

Statfjord Øst is tied back to the Statfjord C platform by pipelines. A total of four new wells will be drilled from existing subsea templates. The project also includes modifications on Statfjord C and a new pipeline for gas lift.

Kjetil Hove, Equinor’s senior vice president for Field Life eXtension. (Photo: Ole Jørgen Bratland)

“We will be a leading late life operator on the NCS. In order to achieve this, we must work in new ways to reduce costs, thereby offering new opportunities for investments in late life fields ensuring profitable reservoir management. The Statfjord Øst decision is a good example of this,” says Hove.

This decision enables an improvement of the recovery factor on Statfjord Øst and gives an important contribution to extending the life of the Statfjord C platform and the Statfjord Øst field towards 2040.

The original oil volume in place on Statfjord Øst was 415 million barrels of oil. The current recovery factor is 56 percent. As a result of this project, the expected recovery factor is increased to 62 percent.

Anders Opedal, president and CEO of Equinor, submitted the Written notification of material changes to the Plan for Development and Operation Statfjord Øst to Tina Bru, Minister of Petroleum and Energy. (Photo: Ole Jørgen Bratland)

Plans call for installation of a pipeline for gas lift, modifications on Statfjord C and drilling of new wells in 2022 - 2024. Production start is scheduled for 2024.

The Statfjord Øst development comprises subsea installations that include three templates. The field is located five kilometers north-east of Statfjord C. The field came on stream in 1994.

The licence partners in Statfjord Øst Unit: Equinor Energy AS (31.6875%), Petoro AS (30.0000%), Vår Energi AS (20.5500%), Spirit Energy Norway AS (11.5625%), Idemitsu Petroleum Norge AS (4.8000%), Wintershall Dea Norge AS (1.4000%).

After several extensions of the Statfjord field life, the current goal is to maintain safe and profitable operation until 2040. Statfjord is part of FLX, which was established to meet the strategic opportunities and challenges of late life fields in relation to Equinor’s competitiveness.

FLX aims to ensure that Equinor is the leading company in safe and efficient operations with low carbon emissions from late life fields on the NCS.

Subsea trenching and excavation pioneer, Rotech Subsea, has secured a contract for a second phase of vital infrastructure works at a state-owned wind farm in offshore Taiwan - and at the same time has secured a commission to supply an additional spread of equipment for a wholly new campaign for the same client which will run concurrently.

 DNV GL, the world’s leading classification society, and HHI Group, the world’s largest shipyard, have teamed up to embark on the development of future-proof tanker designs. In a recent "Green Tankers towards 2050" industry webinar, attended by more than 250 participants from shipping companies around the world, DNV GL and HHI Group presented the results of new joint research and explained how eco-friendly maritime solutions can help shipowners and managers to cope with stricter environmental regulations now and in the future.

ConocoPhillips has made a new oil discovery in production license 891 on the Slagugle prospect located 14 miles north-northeast of the Heidrun Field in the Norwegian Sea. ConocoPhillips Skandinavia AS is operator of the license with 80 percent working interest. Pandion Energy AS is license partner with 20 percent working interest.

Safeway, a Dutch specialist in the design and manufacture of offshore transfer equipment, has been awarded a contract by Heerema Marine Contractors (HMC) to supply a Safeway Seagull type motion compensated gangway system for installation on the CSV Normand Baltic.

This contract marks Safeway’s first contract for HMC, and it is also the first time the Safeway Seagull system with 3D crane function will be deployed to transfer personnel and cargo during an offshore wind project in Taiwan.

Heerema was awarded a promising contract for a very large wind farm off the coast of Taiwan. The scope of work involves the transport and installation of one hundred eleven (111) turbine foundations as well as the installation of two large offshore substations. The installation work will be executed by Heerema’s Aegir.

The rental contract for the 28 meter-long walk-to-work Safeway Seagull gangway will commence during the 1st half 2021 for an initial term of up to 168 days, with an option for a possible extension.

“In recent months the Safeway Seagull gangway has undeniably demonstrated its ability to outperform other systems in a series of offshore wind farm projects, during both commissioning and maintenance campaigns. We have already reached record transfer speeds for the safe and efficient transfer of people and cargo with this type of gangway, and we are excited to be partnering with Heerema for the very first time and for the opportunity to prove to them our high-quality service,” explained Wijnand van Aalst, CEO at Safeway. “Obviously we are honoured that Heerema has opted to make use of Safeway Seagull’s unique features such as roll compensation, height adjustment, zero impact bumpering/hover mode and counterweight, ensuring unrivalled workability throughout the year.”

This ‘first’ W2W-project offshore Taiwan is a significant milestone for Safeway, marking the entry by the Dutch transfer specialist into another promising and challenging offshore wind region. Van Aalst: “Not only are we adding a new country to our portfolio, we are also gaining further access to the Asia Pacific region after successful jobs in Australia and Malaysia. Walk to Work operations are becoming increasingly important in this region and with our Safeway Seagull gangway type we can ensure maximum efficiency of operations for our clients.”

Floating Power Plant (FPP) is building the biggest wave energy PTO (Power Take-off) test bench in the world. FPP is collaborating with Fritz Schur Energy, Seasystems and Aalborg University.

The Singaporean shipyard Keppel Offshore & Marine Ltd., successfully delivered the 6,000 m3 Trailing Suction Hopper Dredger Ortelius to Jan De Nul Group. This vessel is an identical copy of the Ultra-Low Emission vessel Sanderus, in service since February 2020 and currently at work on the River Scheldt in Belgium.

Oceaneering International (Oceaneering) has been awarded a contract from OneSubsea, a Schlumberger company, for the supply of the first-ever 20,000 psi-rated subsea hydraulic junction plates and associated connection hardware.

World-leading subsea robotics design and manufacturing specialists, Soil Machine Dynamics (SMD) has partnered with Dutch subsea contractor N-SEA to successfully prove ground-breaking new subsea technology that could change the future of cable construction.

ARTEMIS Survey is the new high-frequency electromagnetic cable and pipeline survey system tested in live environments by N-SEA and SMD in the North Sea in November 2020. During the offshore sea trial on a buried live cable, the data produced by ARTEMIS Survey when compared with pre-existing data successfully proved the location of this power cable, buried to a depth of 2m below the seabed and at an overall distance of 4m from the cable, in line with offshore survey standards.

This is a significant step-change in the detection performance for unpowered and abandoned cables, a capability which will revolutionize cable construction and maintenance activities carried out during low wind productivity or when cable failures have occurred.

Commenting on the ground-breaking technology, Stephen Wilson, Strategic Business Development Manager from SMD, said, “The live trials were the culmination of a two-year journey to develop this new equipment. Along with our partner Optimal Ranging, the research and development team has focused on applying the unique nature of high-frequency electromagnetic fields to produce an easy-to-use, operationally ready survey system that can be fitted to any ROV. The fact it works on dead or faulty cables - something that has never been achieved before - has huge implications for the future of the cabling industry. We are very excited to see where ARTEMIS leads.”

SMD has worked with several early-adopter offshore survey teams to test and improve the system and has now agreed on an ongoing development partnership with N-SEA to test ARTEMIS Survey across its full range of power, telecom cables and pipeline applications.

Paul van Waalwijk, Managing Director from N-SEA, said, “We were an early adopter of the ARTEMIS technology and are proud to have been a part of this journey so fa. We completed a trial on a live cable and are excited to continue the exploration, together with SMD and Optimal Ranging. The detection of a buried cable in both horizontal and vertical directions has been one of the biggest challenges in the last decade. This system will disrupt the subsea cable and pipeline survey market.”

According to Pradeep Pandey, CEO of Optimal Ranging, “We have a proven record of innovating and delivering sensor systems and software based on modeling and measuring electromagnetic fields. SMD and Optimal Range share a common vision and goal of providing solutions to challenging problems relate to the offshore utility grid. The breakthrough performance of ARTEMIS is a result of our close cooperation and diligence. We look forward to working together to continue to develop and deliver solutions”

SMD and N-SEA are now seeking asset owners and contractors that are interested in using this new technology.

Van Oord has ordered a next-generation custom-built green cable-laying vessel. The vessel will be delivered from VARD in Norway and equipped with the latest sustainable technologies. The vessel will be fully operational in 2023.

Operators in the oil and gas market are continuously streamlining their production and optimizing equipment performance. For Aker BP, which operates the floating production storage offloading (FPSO) vessel Alvheim, this has led to the company awarding Sulzer a contract to retrofit a water injection pump (WIP) to meet its 2030 growth strategy.