Statoil and Aker have been left counting the cost after deciding to cancel a planned semi-submersible rig project which would have provided year-round services on the Norwegian continental shelf.
The proposed Cat B rig was due to provide well intervention and drilling services for at least eight years, starting from 2015.
The firms agreed a deal in April 2012, with Aker to build and use the unit to provide services for Statoil, but the companies announced today that the technology needed to construct the new rig was more demanding than initially anticipated and that they had mutually agreed to cancel the contract.
Aker now faces a one-off hit in its second quarter of £40million with accountability for its own project-related costs, with £38million of that down to investments in the Cat B rig project and the remainder operating costs.
The charter period of the contract will also be removed from the order backlog, worth an estimated £1.2billion for the lifetime of the deal. Statoil did not disclose the costs it would be incurring from the cancellation of the project.
“Aker Solutions and Statoil have together concluded that the project can’t be realised within the framework of the contract,” said Per Harald Kongelf, regional president for Norway at Aker Solutions.
“Unfortunately, the technological issues weren’t solved in the initial system definition phase of the project. We still believe in the concept of Cat B, but the technology needs more time to be developed.” The rig would have helped boost recovery rates from production wells, but the firms admitted developing the subsea technology needed for the rig to provide the required services in shallow waters had been a problem.
“Unfortunately, we have to declare that it is impossible to achieve this major industrial project within the scope of the current contract,” says Jon Arnt Jacobsen, Statoil’s chief procurement officer.
The Norwegian oil giants said they would now consider alternative options following the cancelled deal.
Aker, which was planning to spin off the oilfield services unit which was responsible for the Cat B rig, said it had learned much from the project despite its failure.
“We made significant progress in developing Cat B,” Kongelf said.
“We will seek to use the experience we’ve gained to explore future possibilities for maturing and realising this type of technology.”
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