AS Norske Shell has awarded Norway's largest single contract to an Aker Engineering-M.W. Kellogg joint venture for construction of a gas treatment plant for the Troll field development project in the Norwegian North Sea.
The 4 billion kroner ($640 million) contract covers engineering, procurement, construction, and management with incentives and liability for costs, schedule maintenance, and quality.
The plant will be built on a 90 acre site at Kollsnes in Oygarden, outside Bergen. Production capacity after drying and compression will be 84 million cu m/day (2.966 bcfd) of export quality gas for shipment through 1,100 km (683 miles) of pipeline to Zeebrugge, Belgium, and Emden, Germany.
Detailed engineering is to be complete by the end of 1993, with major construction work scheduled for completion by late 1995.
Troll gas sales are to begin Oct. 1, 1996.
Three gas trains are planned for the Kollsnes site. Two will be installed for start-up with a third in readiness for peak production in 2002.
Gas will be compressed for export to 2,460 psi by five 40,000 kw (54,400 hp) compressors, at least three of which will be installed by 1996. They will be the largest used in such an application. The current record size is 33,000 kw (44,880 hp).
East Troll holds 30 tcf of gas and 190 million bbl of condensate, while West Troll holds 520 million bbl of oil, 16 tcf of gas, and 103 million bbl of condensate.
A wellhead platform will send East Troll gas through two pipelines to Kollsnes. West Troll's oil will be produced by a semisubmersible concrete platform, while West Troll gas will be produced with a smaller version of the East Troll platform and treated either in Frigg field or at Kollsnes.
Troll, Europe's largest offshore gas field, is capable of meeting 10% of western Europe's gas demand well into the next century.
The Troll sales contract is central to Norway's marketing plans for its offshore gas. It specifies volumes of gas to be delivered without naming a source, implying that all fields delivering gas under the Troll contract will receive an averaged gas price and be charged a mean transportation cost.
Gas sources will include Troll and Sleipner fields at first, with the possibility of Oseberg and Midgard and smaller fields such as South Gullfaks, Huldra, Visund, and Hild being tied in later.
Troll gas customers will receive a 38.6 billion cu m (1.363 tcf)/year plateau volume in 2004-05.
Shell is operator for the development phase of East Troll, the first part of the field to be developed, while Den norske stats oljeselskap AS will operate production.
Other first phase partners are Norsk Hydro AS, Saga Petroleum AS, Norske Conoco AS, Elf Aquitaine Norge AS, and Total.
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