Statoil signs environmental monitoring development agreement

Statoil has awarded Kongsberg Oil & Gas Technologies a contract worth NOK 150 million over three years to develop the world’s first integrated environmental monitoring system (EM) for oil and gas activities.

Statoil currently employs several environmental monitoring methods at its installations, mainly on the Norwegian continental shelf. However, there are no solutions available on the market that are integrated and enable physical, biological and chemical data to be measured during actual operations.

"Environmental monitoring is essential for Statoil in order to achieve its target of zero harmful discharges. We are now signing a deal for a three-year research project and a lot of hard work remains to be done before we will know whether EM works as we hope it will. But if we succeed in taking environmental monitoring from being a separate task to become an integrated part of daily production, we will achieve even safer operations and reduced costs. This will represent a quantum leap for offshore environmental monitoring," says Statoil R&D head Karl Johnny Hersvik.

Kongsberg Oil & Gas Technologies will head a consortium that also comprises Kongsberg Maritime Subsea, IBM and DNV, each of whom will contribute technology and expertise within several areas.

The programme will lead to an integrated environmental monitoring concept by building on current technologies and developing new subsea and topside data technology.

Statoil is contributing NOK 75 million of the contract's NOK 150 million framework, while the remaining NOK 75 million is being split among the consortium members.

The technology will be tested out at Kongsberg Maritime Subsea on the seabed of the harbour basin in Horten.

(Press release)

Wednesday, 14 December 2011 07:32