ABL Awarded Marine Warranty Services Contract for Statfjord A Platform Decommissioning in Norway

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On September 23, ABL announced that it has been awarded a Marine Warranty Survey (MWS) services contract by Allseas to provide independent technical review and on-site marine warranty services for the single-lift removal of the Statfjord A platform topsides in the North Sea. The removal operation will be carried out by Allseas' heavy-lift vessel Pioneering Spirit, which is planned to complete the single-lift operation using its upgraded 60,000-tonne topsides lift system.

ABL's scope of work includes conducting an independent third-party technical review of the removal procedure documentation, assessing the suitability of the proposed vessel fleet and offshore operation plans, and deploying personnel to participate in critical offshore operations to witness and approve the actual execution process. The assignment is led by ABL's Norwegian team with support from the company's North Sea decommissioning business team, and the contract is executed under ABL's existing framework agreement with Allseas in Norway.

Statfjord A is located in the Statfjord field in the Norwegian North Sea and features a concrete gravity-based structure. The topsides were previously announced to weigh approximately 48,000 tonnes, with a length of about 84 meters and a width of about 54 meters. Equinor had previously awarded the topsides engineering, preparation, removal, transportation, and disposal contract to a company within the Allseas group, with Pioneering Spirit responsible for lifting the entire topsides in a single lift from the concrete base.

To execute large-scale offshore platform decommissioning projects such as Statfjord A, Allseas has increased the single-lift capacity of Pioneering Spirit's motion-compensated topsides lift system from 48,000 tonnes to 60,000 tonnes. Allseas previously stated explicitly that the Statfjord A approximately 50,000-tonne topsides removal contract was one of the direct drivers for this capacity upgrade. The upgraded system utilizes 16 new lever mechanisms, supported by dedicated rotating arms and locking assemblies.

After removal is completed, the Statfjord A topsides will be transferred in one piece by Pioneering Spirit to Allseas' dedicated transport barge Iron Lady, then towed to the Stord disposal site on the west coast of Norway for onshore landing, dismantling, and material recycling. Allseas had previously selected the local dismantling facility to undertake the subsequent onshore disposal work.

Statfjord A achieved first oil in 1979 and was originally scheduled for earlier decommissioning, after which Equinor and its partners extended the field's life multiple times. In 2020, the partners decided to further extend the production period in the Statfjord area and postponed Statfjord A's originally planned decommissioning to around 2027. The current ABL contract corresponds to the marine warranty and single-lift preparation phase within the platform decommissioning chain.