Statoil gets green light to use Gina Krog FSO

Norway’s Statoil has received consent from the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) to use the Gina Krog FSO on the namesake field offshore Norway. 

The Gina Krog floating storage and offloading (FSO) is a converted shuttle tanker destined for use as a storage vessel on the Gina Krog oil and gas field, which is located 250 kilometers west of Stavanger and 30 kilometers north-west of the Sleipner A platform in the North Sea.

The field has been developed using a fixed steel platform and a storage vessel (FSO) for oil, and started production in June 2017.

The Gina Krog platform is tied in to Sleipner A and uses both processing capacity on the platform and existing pipelines for sending the gas to the market in Europe.

Oil from the field is set to be transported by the Gina Krog FSO unit, which was converted from the former shuttle tanker Randgrid from the Heidrun field by Sembcorp Marine’s subsidiary Sembawang shipyard. The unit headed from Singapore to Norway in July.

According to the latest AIS data, the FSO is currently moored in Randaberg at the northern end of Stavanger.

Statoil is the operator of the Gina Krog field with an interest of 58.7 percent. French oil major Total recently sold its 15% stake in the field to KUFPEC which will upon completion of transaction have 30% interest. The remaining interest is held by PGNiG Upstream Norway (8%) and Aker BP (3.3%).

The consent for the use of the Gina Krog FSO has been granted by the offshore safety regulator in accordance with Statoil’s application.

Teekay owns and operates the FSO. No Acknowledgement of Compliance (AoC) will be issued, since this is a facility that will only be used for storage.

Offshore Energy Today Staff