Gassco gets green light to use Polarled pipeline

Norwegian offshore safety agency, the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA), has given its consent to the state-owned company Gassco to use the Polarled offshore pipeline.

Polarled is a new gas pipeline from Statoil’s Aasta Hansteen field in the Norwegian Sea to the Shell-operated Nyhamna gas processing facility in Møre Og Romsdal county.

The pipeline is a new transport solution for the Norwegian Sea gas field and a common infrastructure for handling increased production volumes.

The joint venture company Polarled JV, consisting of Gassco, Statoil, Petoro, OMV, Shell, Total, RWE Dea, ConocoPhillips, Edison, Maersk Oil, Engie, and Wintershall, owns the pipeline which is 481 kilometers long and 36 inches in diameter.

Gassco was responsible for the Polarled project until the choice of concept in December 2011. Statoil then took over leadership of the work on behalf of the partners and will hand over operatorship back to Gassco when the work to dewater the pipeline and fill it with gas begins.

According to the PSA, this work is scheduled to start on May 15, 2017. The pipeline will then be left gas-filled until gas deliveries from Aasta Hansteen begin in autumn 2018.

With this, the PSA has given Gassco consent to put the pipeline into commission.

The PSA alrady gave its consent to Shell to use the expanded facilities at the Nyhamna gas plant in Norway to receive gas from the Polarled pipeline.

The following step occurred in February 2017 as the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) granted consent for the start of the Nyhamna expansion. That meant that the processing capacity of 70 million standard cubic meters (Sm3) per day would increase to 84 million Sm3 per day.

The Nyhamna expansion consists of two main parts. The first was the addition of new onshore compressors for gas compression for the Ormen Lange offshore field while the second part includes export and process facilities for the Polarled pipeline.

Offshore Energy Today Staff