VIDEO: Monitoring ‘Snohvit’ World’s First Subsea Oil System

Snøhvit is the first offshore development in the Barents Sea and the first major development on the Norwegian continental shelf with no surface installations.

The seabed facilities are designed to be over-trawlable, so that neither they nor fishing equipment will suffer any damage from coming into contact.

No fixed or floating units are positioned in the Barents Sea. Instead, the subsea production facilities stand on the seabed, in water depths of 250-345 metres. A total of 20 wells are due to produce gas from the Snøhvit, Askeladd and Albatross fields.

This output is transported to land through a 143-kilometre pipeline.

Oil and Gas subsea operators across the world are adopting a GE Industrial Internet technology developed in Norway.

The GE Measurement and Control Subsea Condition Monitoring system (also known as the ‘Cage’) measures sound and electrical signals emitted from subsea equipment, often an early warning sign of developing leaks and other issues.

The GE “Birdcage” is a subsea monitoring system that allows the Snohvit facility to operate smoothly and efficiently, deep under the Barents Sea in the frozen Polar north.