Aker BP all set to deploy AKOFS vessel for well intervention work off Norway

Norwegian oil and gas player Aker BP has received consent from the country’s offshore safety regulator to use one of AKOFS Offshore’s well intervention vessels on a field located in the Norwegian Sea.

The Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSA) revealed earlier this week that it had given Aker BP consent to use the mobile drilling facility AKOFS Seafarer for well intervention activities on the Skarv field.

Prior to being converted into a well intervention vessel, AKOFS Seafarer was originally a supply ship built at the STX Europe Søviknes shipyard in 2010. The vessel received an Acknowledgement of Compliance (AoC) from the PSA in August 2020. AKOFS Seafarer is fitted with a 42-metre tall derrick with active heave compensated cranes and has a skidding system with pallet capacities of 100 tonnes in the moonpool area and 60 tonnes outside.

Located in the northern part of the Norwegian Sea, about 200 km west of Sandnessjøen and 35 kilometres southwest of the Norne field, the Skarv field was discovered in 1998, and the plan for development and operation (PDO) was approved in 2007, while production from the field started in 2013.

Developed with a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit with five subsea templates with fifteen wells, this field has one of the world’s largest offshore gas processing plants on this type of facility, according to Aker BP.

The Skarv FPSO has a substantial plant for gas processing, where the gas is processed before it is transported to the Kårstø plant in an 80-kilometre-long pipeline connected to the Åsgard Transport System (ÅTS), while oil from the Skarv field is offloaded to tankers.

Aker BP’s ambition for the Skarv area is to increase production significantly until 2040 and the company has undertaken several measures to reach this goal, including obtaining approval from the Norwegian government in March 2022 to ramp up gas production.

Moreover, the Norwegian player made two gas discoveries near the Skarv field recently: the first one was made in July and the second one in August.