GE and Halvorsen to provide equipment for Johan Castberg project

A consortium of GE and Norway’s Halvorsen has been awarded a contract for the provision of a seawater sulfate removal system for the Johan Castberg project off Norway. 

GE said on Tuesday that the contract was awarded by the Norwegian oil major Statoil and would be executed by GE Water & Process Technologies in cooperation with Halvorsen TEC.

The company added that the seawater sulfate removal unit (SRU) would help protect production wells in Statoil’s Johan Castberg project in the Barents Sea, off Norway.

The Johan Castberg field (formerly Skrugard) is situated about 100 kilometers north of the Snøhvit field in the Barents Sea.

Engineers from the two companies are responsible for front-end engineering design (FEED) work in close cooperation with the operator as well as with Aker Solutions, company in charge of the floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel concept for the Johan Castberg oilfield.

Work is expected to go out in 2017 when the final investment decision for the project is planned to be carried out. According to GE, this is the company’s first order of its seawater sulfate removal technology for the offshore oil and gas industry, and the first time GE and Halvorsen TEC have been jointly awarded a complete SRU order although the pair has collaborated on several offshore oil and gas projects.

Svein Helge Pettersen, managing director of Halvorsen TEC, said: “We are pleased to collaborate with GE on the SRU project to help Statoil protect its wells in the Johan Castberg field. We will be able to utilize our extensive engineering and fabrication capabilities in Norway to perform a majority of the SRU work and support the local economy. Components also will be sourced from Norway whenever possible.”

Heiner Markhoff, president and CEO of GE Water & Process Technologies, added: “Sulfate removal is important to help ensure that production assets remain free of barium and strontium scale, which would precipitate if untreated seawater is injected.”

The SRU will allow Statoil to inject approximately 2,000 cubic meters per hour of seawater at less than 20 parts per million of sulfate content and less than 20 parts per billion of oxygen. The SRU’s injection capacity will be 1,188 cubic meters per hour at 6 bar.

The GE-Halvorsen TEC SRU package will include seawater sulfate reducing nanofiltration membranes, GE’s ZeeWeed horizontal ultrafiltration system, a deoxygenation membrane technology from 3M, and a full single-lift SRU.

In addition to the core technologies, GE is providing a service package for remote monitoring of the entire seawater injection plant.

GE said that the FEED portion of the project would last six months. Equipment delivery is expected to take place mid-2019, while the first oil is expected to be produced in 2022.

The project is divided into two phases. Aker will oversee FEED work during phase one while the FPSO equipment will be fabricated and delivered during phase two.