courtesy Petro-Canada

Italian oil company ENI and partners DNO and StatoilHydro are said to have settled on the island of Soeroya in the Barents Sea — just west of Statoil’s Hammerfest liquefied natural gas plant — as the location for an oil terminal to service the Goliat oilfield.

According to local newspaper Altaposten, ENI environment head Liv Nielsen said the island was best suited among a range of available sites for a project that could cost up to NOK 23 million ($4.3 billion).

Authorities in sparsely populated Finnmark county, host to StatoilHydro’s Snohvit LNG facility, have long lobbied for a Goliat landfall to create jobs in the Norwegian Far North.

Conservative estimates say the Goliat oilfield holds 250 million barrels of oil. As many as 25 development concepts have been mulled over the past year, most of which involved a considerable marine element: semi-submersible production, floating production and seabed-to-shore have all figured prominently in ENI’s planning, although engineers reportedly balked at getting the 33 API oil the 73 kilometres to shore.

“In fields with corresponding low pressure, the longest offset we know of today is 16 km,” newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv quoted Nielsen as saying on Monday.

Despite optimism for a landfall, none is assured, and oil may be produced and exported entirely from offshore by shuttle tanker.

Moreover, talk of an oil terminal appeared potentially of the mark with little oil demand in Arctic Norway’s barren remoteness.

Norway’s northern counties, meanwhile, have laid electronic infrastructure and lobbied politicians as they gear up to be the Nordic country’s new oil region. ws@scandoil.com