Italian oil company Eni’s Norwegian business has chosen a “round rig” solution form floating production specialist Sevan for its $4.9-billion, storm-prone Goliat oilfield off Norway’s northern coast.

The country’s first, arctic oilfield will feature a Sevan 1000 FPSO floating production storage and offloading facility. An Aker Solutions concrete design had been a rival concept, but designers appear to have solved how to winterize the cylindrical Sevan.

The post-design-stage contract award means Eni will charter the Sevan FPSO for the Goliat field. Area satellites are envisioned filling capacity at the 100,000-barrel-a-day facility. The FPSO might also produce up to 3.9 million standard cubic meters per day of gas.

The “round rig’s” storage of one million barrels buys time for tankers to make the voyage to remote northern Norway to pick up cargoes, although the field lies just south of a tanker route heavy in ships carrying Russian oil and gas.

Speculation once had Eni building tanks on shore, and indeed suppliers were once asked to consider “landfall” for pipelines to onshore storage tanks.

“A dedicated pipeline would not be good for connecting satellites of different well streams,” . ENI technical manager for Goliat Arild Eserud had told Scandoil.com.

He said the floater solution was decisively less complicated and therefore less costly while holding out technology options for increased oil recovery. A floater was “good for tie-ins and good on Capex.”

A pipeline to onshore storage would have added “NOK5 billion” and sub-sea-to-beach “5 billion more”.

Goliat is “two complex reservoirs, or two main areas” which might need gas injection “in the initial period”. The field holds 240 million barrels of oil equivalent, 65 percent of which is oil.

Eni is understood to have Norwegian oil-spill outfit NOFI on standby. The company’s Buster series of oil traps deploy quickly by small craft and are “80- to 90 percent efficient” when cleaning up spills. The field’s nearness to shore has Greens on edge for the brief voyage spills might take to reach land.

To counter air pollution from generators, Eni has opted for electricity from shore and an “oil containment system” for a floater that’ll bob up and down over seas rich in cod and crab.

Aker Solutions, meanwhile, reminded shareholders it was still vying to be the contractor that puts topside process technology and a working deck on the Sevan hull. Sevan contacts and contracts with yards in Asia all but ensure the FPSO's hull — built using shipbuilding techniques — will not be built in Norway.

Aker engineers, meanwhile, have had first-hand knowledge of Goliat's needs and Aker Solutions could well win a tender to engineer, build and find suppliers for the production vessel. "The choice of contractor remains open," an Aker Solutions statement said ahead of a new tender process.

Eni (65 percent) shares Goliat with StatoilHydro (35 percent).

Tags: Eni Norge AS, Goliat, Sevan Marine