GE OIL & Gas has been awarded a contract worth more than $70million by StatoilHydro to upgrade a suite of subsea control systems for the Norwegian major’s Tordis Vigdis Controls Modification (TVCM) project.
The solution will incorporate GE’s award-winning next-generation subsea electronics module – the VetcoGray SemStar5.
The company says the TVCM project will be the first globally to deploy the VetcoGray SemStar5 subsea electronics module and has the key objectives of higher subsea reliability, extended service life and improved environmental monitoring.
The SemStar5 subsea electronics modules needed for the Tordis Vigdis project are being developed and manufactured at GE Oil & Gas’s Nailsea facilities in Bristol, which is also building the related VetcoGray ModPod subsea control modules. The systems will be shipped to Norway for installation offshore in 2010 and 2011.
GE’s newly upgraded test and assembly facilities at Dusavik, Stavanger, will also be used for the development of related intervention tooling which will be utilised for TVCM.
Manuel Terranova, a senior vice-president at the company, said: “We recognise the importance of this new technology developed for StatoilHydro as a breakthrough concept for brownfield enhancements and see great leverage in applying the concept further worldwide.”
The TVCM work will be executed under the subsea production systems frame agreement awarded to GE Oil & Gas by StatoilHydro in autumn 2007.
StatoilHydro’s Tordis and Vigdis oilfields are located in the North Sea, west of Norway in some 200m (656ft) of water.