4Subsea to monitor Var Energi’s drilling ops offshore Norway

4Subsea has secured a service agreement with Vår Energi to monitor and analyse wellhead integrity to ensure safe operations for the Balder Future drilling and completion operations in Norway.

West Phoenix rig; Source: Equinor

Under the three-year deal, 4Subsea will monitor the West Phoenix drilling rig for the Norwegian oil and gas firm.

The company will use its SWIM service for the work, which creates a digital twin of the well and riser systems combined with boundary conditions and updated with sensor data.

Sensor data is collected using remotely operated underwater vehicles and is uploaded to 4Subsea’s digital service 4insight, which performs advanced analysis on the data.

The results are presented as insights and dashboards, simplifying the analysis, while no extra personnel is required, 4Subsea said.

“We are pleased that Vår Energi has chosen SWIM and 4insight for their drilling and completion operations on Balder Future operations,” said Peter Jenkins, 4Subsea CEO.

“These services have proven to reduce operational risk and costs during complex operations and are great demonstrations of the digital transformation of offshore operations to increase safety.”

The Balder field is located in the North Sea production licence 001 where Vår Energi is the operator with a 90% interest and Mime Petroleum as its partner, holding the remaining 10%.

Most recently, Vår Energi made a ‘significant’ discovery of oil and gas in the King and Prince exploration wells in the Balder area.

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