First steel cut for part of the structure to be used for the Johan Svedrup drilling platform, one of the largest structures of its kind in Europe. Photo courtesy of Statoil
STAVANGER, Norway, June 29 (UPI) -- The first steel was cut for what will become the platform used for drilling into the giant Johan Svedrup field in the North Sea, operator Statoil said Monday.
A Norwegian metal worker started cutting steel for the jacket, the tower support structure, for the riser platform used for Johan Svedrup. At a designed 26,500 tons, the entire jacket will be the largest in Europe once completed. A special barge, the largest of its kind in the world, will transport the structure to the drilling site once completed in 2017.
"We've got an ambitious plan to bring Johan Sverdrup on stream in late 2019 and, in accordance with this plan, we've now started to produce first building bricks for the project," Kjetel Digre, senior vice president for the Johan Sverdrup development project, said in a statement.
Johan Sverdrup is one of the five biggest oil fields ever discovered on the Norwegian continental shelf, with reserves estimated at between 1.7 billion and 3 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
Statoil and its partners at Johan Sverdrup, Maersk Oil and Lundin Petroleum, outlined a development multi-phase operations plan for the field in early 2014.
For the economy, the company estimates Johan Sverdrup should generate $200 billion in revenues over the next 50 years. Once in full swing, the field should account for as much as 25 percent of all Norwegian petroleum production.
Peak production is expected to be as high as 650,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.
The 2019 start date is a year later than originally planned and the government in April said the delay left the country short of its 10-year reserve growth objectives. For Statoil itself, lower oil prices means less revenue and spending for one of the largest energy companies in Europe.
First quarter earnings of $3 billion were about half as much as reported for first quarter 2014. In early June, the company sold its $320 million head office building to U.S. real estate investment firm Colony Capital, Inc.
