More time for cleantech player on Odfjell-operated rig in Norwegian Sea

Norway-based cleantech service provider Soiltech has won contracts with OMV Norge, a compatriot subsidiary of Austria-headquartered oil and gas player OMV, and Northern Ocean Wind for drilling waste management on a semi-submersible rig managed by Odfjell Drilling.

The contracts for work on Deepsea Bollsta, which is owned by Northern Ocean, are scheduled to start in Q2 2025 and take 45–105 days. The combined deals are estimated to be large for Soiltech, a designation the firm uses for contracts above NOK 20 million, or approximately $1.92 million.

“We are grateful to OMV Norge and Northern Ocean for the trust they have placed in us,” noted Glenn Åsland, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Soiltech. “By combining offshore cuttings handling, fluid processing, and onshore waste management, we offer a highly efficient and cost-effective solution tailored to our clients’ operational needs.”

The 2020-built Deepsea Bollsta sixth-generation semi-submersible rig is of Moss CS60E design and can accommodate 140 people. It can carry out operations in both benign and harsh environments at water depths of up to 3,000 meters.

This comes on the heels of OMV Norge securing a drilling permit from the Norwegian Offshore Directorate (NOD) to drill a wildcat well duo in the Norwegian Sea last week. Both wells are scheduled to be drilled in May 2025 with the Deepsea Bollsta rig.

Soiltech will provide solid waste handling and processing of liquid fluids on Deepsea Bollsta and handle drilling waste onshore. The firm says its SmartTransfer system enables the cuttings containment and transfer solutions on the rig to be adapted to the clients’ requirements for handling capacity and drilling efficiency.

The Norwegian player also won a contract with Northern Ocean for drilling waste management on the same rig for Equinor in early January. The work is expected to start in the second half of 2025 and comes with a firm duration of two years, plus five one-year optional periods.

Later that month, OMV Petrom handed out a five-year contract to Soiltech for handling drill cuttings on the drilling rig Transocean Barents for the Neptun Deep project under development in Romania’s Black Sea.

In March, the Transocean Barents rig started drilling the first well for the development and production of the Pelican South and Domino natural gas fields in the Neptun Deep block. The rig’s assignment is set to last 540 days.