Equinor hires DeepOcean for work at North Sea platform

Oslo-headquartered ocean services provider DeepOcean has been awarded a contract by Equinor to support riser replacement operations at a platform located in the northern part of the North Sea.

While the value of the contract has not been disclosed, DeepOcean’s contract scope covers engineering, transportation, and installation of the gas export riser, subsea tie-ins, and pre-commissioning support for the Troll B – Increased Gas Export project, which involves a replacement of the current 15” gas export riser with a new 13” gas export riser at the Troll B platform.

Rolf Ivar Sørdal, Commercial Director Europe, commented: “We believe this award recognises our solid performance on previous riser replacement jobs for Equinor. We look forward to collaborating with Equinor to ensure that the Troll B project too is successfully and safely executed.”

Furthermore, the project management and engineering for the Troll B riser replacement is due to start immediately at DeepOcean’s office in Stavanger with further support from the firm’s Haugesund office in Norway.

On the other hand, offshore operations are planned to take place in 2024 utilising the Edda Freya installation vessel, which is on charter to DeepOcean. Troll B is a floating processing and accommodation platform with a concrete substructure.

Located in the northern part of the North Sea, the Troll B platform is used on the Troll field along with Troll A and C platforms. The field lies about 65 kilometres west of Kollsnes near Bergen. According to Equinor, this is one of the largest oil fields on the NCS.

Previously, DeepOcean performed similar riser replacement operations, along with complex marine operations, at several Equinor-operated fields, including Njord, Kristin, Troll C, and Åsgard. The company also recently completed a similar riser replacement job at the Snorre field.

“Our skilled onshore and offshore staff together with Equinor’s team have introduced a new benchmark for efficiency and operability in this part of the offshore construction segment,” added Sørdal.

DeepOcean secured several new assignments over the past few months. The most recent one was revealed two weeks ago after RWE selected the company as the preferred supplier of inter-array cable installation for the Nordseecluster A offshore wind project.

While this is the first of the two phases of RWE’s Nordseecluster development in the German part of the North Sea, the deal could also enable the subsea services provider to perform the same work on the second, Nordseecluster B phase.