Statoilhydro News

The nomination committee in Statoil has recommended that the company's corporate assembly elects Øystein Løseth as new chair and Roy Franklin as a new member and deputy chair of Statoil's board of directors. Furthermore, the nomination committee recommends a re-election of Bjørn Tore Godal, Jakob Stausholm and Marjan Oudeman as members of the board of directors. Chair of the board Svein Rennemo and board member Jim Mulva have informed the nomination committee that they do not wish to stand for re-election in 2015. Svein Rennemo has been chair of the Statoil board of directors since 2008, and informed the nomination committee in 2014 that he wanted to be replaced.

The Directors to Kvaerner's Board have been elected. From Kvaerner's first day of trading on the Oslo Stock Exchange in July 2011, the Board of Directors will consist of five shareholder-elected members as well as three members elected by Kvaerner's employees. The shareholder-elected members are Kjell Inge Røkke (chairman), Tore Torvund, Bruno Weymuller, Lone Fønss Schrøder and Vibeke Hammer Madsen. The employee-elected members are Rune Rafdal, Ståle Knoff Johansen and Bernt Harald Kilnes. Kjell Inge Røkke is an entrepreneur and industrialist, and has been a driving force in the development of Aker since the 1990s. Mr. Røkke owns 67.8 percent of Aker ASA through The Resource Group TRG AS.

Northern Offshore, Ltd. (Oslo Bors: NOF.OL) announced that its subsidiary, Northern Offshore U.K. Ltd, was awarded a contract with Caspian Drilling Company Limited (CDC) for the provision of support services for drilling operations in the Caspian Sea. The contract runs to July 2011 and has an estimated value of approximately $21m, comprised of fees for technical and operational support in management of the Dada Gorgud semisubmersible drilling rig. Any direct costs incurred in providing the services will be reimbursed. CDC is a subsidiary of The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR). The drilling operations will take place on acreage operated by BP, on behalf of a consortium consisting of BP, Chevron, SOCAR, INPEX, StatoilHydro, ExxonMobil, TPAO, Devon, ITOCHU and Hess.

Statoil (OSE: STL, NYSE: STO) announced that the Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) the company entered into as a part of the settlement of  the Horton case, has expired as scheduled. On 13 October 2006 the company reached agreements with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the US Department of Justice (DOJ), and the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (USAO) that settled the agencies' investigations under US law related to Statoil's 2002 contract with Horton Investments Ltd. for business development in Iran. StatoilHydro has fulfilled its obligations under the DPA, and the criminal charges have now been dismissed.

StatoilHydro ASA changed its name to Statoil ASA with effect from Nov. 1. The ticker symbols will remain unchanged as STL on the Oslo Stock Exchange and STO on the New York Stock Exchange.   (www.statoil.com)

Better drilling methods are making the single biggest contribution to improving recovery from Norway’s offshore fields. A number of solutions adopted by StatoilHydro this year are already yielding good results. “Downhole intervention and sidetracks from existing wells are the most effective ways of recovering more oil and gas from subsea fields,” said head of subsea technology, Øystein A. Håland. A growing number of discoveries on the Norwegian continental shelf are being developed with subsea installations. At the same time, production is declining from mature fields.

According to an Oct. 19 report from The Wall Street Journal, Cnooc Ltd. is in talks with Norway's StatoilHydro ASA over a deal for a few leases in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, a deal that would open the U.S. Gulf to China's oil companies for the first time, a person familiar with the matter said. (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

Oil has been discovered by StatoilHydro in the Frigg Delta prospect in the North Sea, with proven recoverable volumes put at 18-35 million barrels. This find is located about 21 kilometres east of the abandoned Frigg field and 12 kilometres north of Frøy. "It’s commercially interesting, and we’ve already started looking at prospects for a development linked to nearby oil resources," said Tom Dreyer, head of infrastructure-led exploration in the North Sea. The discovery well encountered oil in sandstone of good reservoir quality belonging to the Frigg formation. "Our starting point has been an old unclarified find in this formation," said Dreyer.

Angolan national oil company Sociedade Nacional de Combustíveis de Angola (Sonangol) and BP announced an oil discovery in ultra-deepwater block 31, offshore Angola. This is the nineteenth find made in this block. StatoilHydro holds a 13.33% stake in block 31. The discovery, called Tebe, is located in the southern portion of block 31 about 12 kilometres south-east of the Hebe discovery and some 350 kilometres northwest of Luanda. It was drilled in a water depth of 1,752 metres and reached a total vertical depth of 3,325 metres below sea level. Block 31 covers an area of 5,349 square kilometres and lies in water depths between 1,500 to 2,500 metres. Well results confirmed the capacity of the reservoir to flow in excess of 5,000 barrels per day under production conditions.

StatoilHydro has awarded Aker Solutions a front end engineering design (FEED) study for upgrading the Gullfaks A drilling facilities. The drilling upgrade is expected to extend the productive lifetime of Gullfaks A. Contract value is estimated to be approximately $8.6m. Scope of work for the FEED study includes new equipment to increase drilling capacity and modification of existing installations offshore. The study will consider the possibility to upgrade the drilling capacity to reach 10 kilometers, including heavy lifting to install a new derrick. The FEED will also include improvement of environment, health and safety (HSE) upgrading for the equipment to be better suited for the increased longitude. The object is to install top modern equipment and automated offshore installation.

The hull of the North Sea Gjøa platform is on its way to Norway from the Samsung shipyard in South Korea. At the weekend an EU naval force provided a military escort as the hull passed through the notorious Gulf of Aden. The result of 1.7 million hours worked in South Korea, the Gjøa platform hull is now on its way to Stord via the Suez Canal. The long voyage to Stord is estimated to take 40-45 days. At the weekend the hull was transported through the Gulf of Aden, where shipping has recently been subject to attacks by Somali pirates who hijack vessels.

Technip joins StatoilHydro in celebrating the inauguration of the Hywind demonstration wind turbine, which took place on September 8 in Karmøy, Norway. Located 10 kilometers offshore Karmøy, Hywind is the first full-scale floating wind turbine and has a capacity of 2.3 MW. Following the award of the turnkey contract for the substructure of the wind turbine in May 2008, Technip’s operating center in Oslo, Norway, performed the project management and installation engineering. Detail design and fabrication of the substructure was carried out at the Group’s construction yard in Pori…

The petroleum industry is facing a new autumn and winter with challenges concerning the lifeboats on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS). Throughout the winter, StatoilHydro will have to continue transferring personnel on some platforms in adverse weather conditions. This could affect production. On Sept. 8 some of the crew on the Visund platform in the North Sea were airlifted to other platforms nearby, or to the mainland. The number of crew on Åsgard B was also reduced during Monday and Tuesday.

The world’s first full-scale floating wind turbine – StatoilHydro’s Hywind pilot – was officially inaugurated in the North Sea, 8 September. StatoilHydro is investing about $57.4m in the project, with Enova providing $9.9m. The latter is a state-owned company which promotes environment-friendly changes to energy production and use in Norway. Hywind comprises a 2.3-megawatt wind turbine installed on a traditional floater of the kind previously used for such applications as production platforms and offshore loading.

FMC Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: FTI) announced that it has been awarded a contract by Petrobras (NYSE: PBR) (NYSE:PBRA) to supply a subsea separation system for the Marlim field, located in the Campos Basin, offshore Brazil. The contract is valued at approximately $90m in revenue to FMC Technologies. FMC's scope of supply consists of a subsea separation and pumping system. The subsea separation module will separate heavy oil, gas, sand and water at a water depth of approximately 2,950 feet (900 meters). The system will apply FMC's separation and sand management technologies, utilizing a novel pipe separator design, licensed and developed in cooperation with StatoilHydro.

The Hammerfest LNG plant at Melkøya in northern Norway will be shut down on Saturday 15 August for up to three months of upgrading and maintenance work. As operator, StatoilHydro is conducting upgrading and modification work at the Hammerfest gas liquefaction plant in order to maintain a high production level in the time ahead. Since start-up in the autumn of 2007, upgrading and replacement of equipment has been carried out to increase the plant's production level. From February this year the plant has produced at approximately full capacity.

The world’s deepest hot tap operations on a pressurized pipeline have been performed on the Ormen Lange field in the Norwegian Sea during early August. “Being able to connect a spur to a producing pipeline yields significant cost savings,” said Bjørn Kåre Viken, vice president for marine technology and operations in StatoilHydro. Enhanced flexibility in deep water is another advantage of such operations, two of which were conducted on Ormen Lange in a depth of 860 metres. The…

The 13-kilometre submarine cable to carry electricity from the Hywind floating wind turbine has now been installed and tested in the sea north-west of Stavanger. Once generation starts, the power will come ashore in Røyrvika near Skudeneshavn on the island of Karmøy and be delivered to local grid operator Haugaland Kraft. This pilot project, based on StatoilHydro’s own concept, ranks as the world’s first full-scale floating wind turbine. It arrived on location 10 kilometres from land in late June.

Gas has been proven by StatoilHydro in exploration well 6507/3-7 Idun North in the Norwegian Sea. Currently being completed, the well is located two kilometres northwest of the Idun find and 12 kilometres north of the Skarv find. The purpose of the well was to prove petroleum in the “Fangst” and “Båt” groups in middle and lower Jurassic rocks. The well proved gas in the “Fangst” group. The underlying “Båt” group was filled with water. “Based on preliminary calculations, the size of the find is estimated at between 0.6 and 3 billion standard cubic metres (Sm3) of recoverable gas,” said Knut Harald Nygård, who is heading StatoilHydro’s exploration activities near existing fields in shallow waters in the northern part of the Norwegian Sea.

StatoilHydro started production from the Tune South satellite well on Saturday 18 July. The satellite is tied back to the Oseberg field centre via the Tune subsea template. "Output from Tune South is expected to be 1.4 million standard cubic metres of gas per day," said Torstein Hole, senior vice president of the operations west business cluster in StatoilHydro. "In its first year of production, Tune South will account for 10% of the gas exported from the Oseberg field centre. Tune South is developed as a satellite well tied back to the Tune subsea template, 10 kilometres south-west of the Oseberg field centre in the North Sea. "Tune South utilises free capacity in the existing infrastructure of the Oseberg area. That makes maximum use of the resources in the area," said Hole.

StatoilHydro has together with operator Anadarko and partners made a discovery in the Vito prospect in deepwater Gulf of Mexico. The Vito well is located in Mississippi Canyon block 984, about 70 kilometres southwest of the Thunder Hawk field. The well was drilled to a total depth of 9,757 metres and is believed to have encountered some 80 metres of net pay, although final test results are still pending. "Vito is our second discovery in the Gulf so far this year. Both Heidelberg and Vito are located in the Miocene play, in areas known for good quality sand development," explains Helen Butcher, head of StatoilHydro's exploration in the Gulf of Mexico.

According to an August 4 report from Bloomberg, StatoilHydro ASA, the world’s largest offshore oil and gas operator, said profit was almost wiped out in the second quarter as the global recession sapped fuel demand, denting prices for crude and natural gas. Net income fell to $12.8m the Stavanger, Norway-based company said. (Bloomberg)

The Heidrun platform in the Norwegian Sea shipped its oil cargo no. 1000 on 7 August. Heidrun's oil production to date has already exceeded the total volume expected to be produced through the field life. The Heidrun platform came on stream on 18 October 1995. When the plan for development and operation (PDO) was submitted to the authorities four years earlier, the estimated production from the field was slightly more than 750 million barrels of oil. When cargo number one thousand was shipped, the field had delivered almost 820 million barrels.