Ramboll wins FEED study for new Barents Sea pipeline

Engineering consulting firm Ramboll will carry out a FEED study for the pipelines connecting Statoil’s Askeladd and Snøhvit fields in the Barents Sea.

With no surface installations and recoverable reserves estimated at 193 billion cubic meters, the Snøhvit field brings natural gas to land for liquefaction and export.

The Snøhvit development consists of the Snøhvit and Albatross fields that are already producing. The Askeladd field is the third discovery part of the Snøhvit development, which will be contributing to maintaining a full capacity utilization at Melkøya LNG plant, outside the Norwegian city of Hammerfest.

According to Ramboll, the Askeladd and Snøhvit pipeline will have a total length of 185 kilometers and it will be a world record for the longest subsea to shore tie-back distance.

Henrik Juhl, senior director of offshore pipelines, subsea, and jackets, said: “This project is in perfect alignment with our objectives of leveraging our services within pipelines and growing our international portfolio.”

Kristoffer Bergholt, head of offshore pipelines department, added: “We are very excited to work with Statoil once again which is a great opportunity to reconfirm our ties after the strong collaboration on the Polarled and Gina Krog projects. Our scope of work is comprehensive and includes a FEED study, as well as umbilical routing installation, protection and tie-in design.”

Ramboll has previously collaborated with Statoil on several projects including Polarled, the first subsea pipeline to take the Norwegian gas infrastructure across the Arctic circle, opening a new gas highway from the Norwegian Sea to Europe.

In related news, Ramboll was appointed in mid-May by the North Oil Company (NOC) to carry out a pre-FEED study for three new wellhead platforms at the gigantic Al-Shaheen field in the Arabian Gulf off Qatar.