Start-Up of Johan Sverdrup Approved
The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate has officially granted its consent for the start-up of the Johan Sverdrup field in the North Sea. The field is expected to produce oil for the next 40 years.
Operator Equinor plans start-up sometime this autumn for the first phase of the field development. Construction phase two is slated to start in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Johan Sverdrup is the third largest oil field on the Norwegian shelf – measured in reserves. Only Statfjord and Ekofisk, both also in the North Sea, are larger. The field is located 155 kilometers west of Karmøy and 40 kilometres south of the Grane field.
According to Equinor, investment costs for development of the first stage of construction are expected to be NOK 83 billion. Estimates indicate that the total recoverable reserves are about 430 million standard cubic meters of oil equivalents (2.7 billion boe.) The field has a production capacity of 105,000 cubic meters of oil per day (660 000 bbls per day). About 95 percent of this is oil, three per cent is dry gas and the rest is natural gas liquids.
The Johan Sverdrup development is being implemented in two stages of construction. The first construction stage includes a field center with four installations connected by bridges. The four installations are a living quarters platform with auxiliary systems, a process platform, a drilling platform and a riser platform. Pipelines for transporting oil and gas, the power from shore unit and three subsea templates for water injection are linked to the riser platform.
The second construction stage consists of an expansion of the field center with a new process platform, five subsea templates connected to the field centre and development of the outer areas of the reservoir. Further development of central areas is also planned through additional wells from the drilling platform.
Electric power for normal operation of the Johan Sverdrup field will be supplied from the land-based grid. Gas and stabilized oil will be transported through a gas pipeline to Statpipe and an oil pipeline to Mongstad, north of Bergen.
Earlier this year, DeepOcean conducted the world's first offshore diver-less remote hyperbaric tie-in operation with the successful completion of the 36-inch oil export pipe spool tie in project on the Johan Sverdrup field.
The two final platform topsides were installed using the heavy lift vessel Pioneering Spirit’s single lift technology. The processing platform lift – nearly 26,000 tons – set a new lifting record offshore.