Norway-based “Round rig” designer Sevan Marine took the occasion of posting a loss on Friday to say its work on Italian oil company Eni’s Goliat oilfield will bring in $400 million in license fees, front-end designs and other engineering work.

Arctic Norway’s first offshore oilfield, Goliat will feature a Sevan floating production and storage unit built to withstand heavy icing. In a breakthrough finance model, the Goliat FPSO will not require up-front capital, chief cause of the debt that has rocked Sevan over the past 12 months.

Sevan posted a fourth-quarter net loss of $68.5 million on Friday, a widening by $40 million, just as key oil company clients begin to pay up for the clear merit in its cylindrical floating producers.

Although nearly a billion dollars in debt saddles the company, Sevan floaters are beginning to earn after wowing oil companies with deck space, storage and relative ease of construction.

Of the company’s floating producers — Piranema off Brazil and Hummingbird in the North Sea — the first is about to turn a profit on 40 percent higher day rates for 2009, while the second helped lift revenues over the same span a year ago.

Still, the capital and debt ascribe to the drilling units has management admitting they may spin the company’s round drill rigs into a new listed company. And the company said it would slow investments on newbuilds until contracts with oil companies take hold.

Meanwhile, it’s not known how the insolvency of Oilexco North Sea Ltd. will impact the five-year contract of the FPSO Sevan Voyageur. Sevan leadership said a trade or sale of Oilexco’s creditor supervised assets is “expected to be concluded in March 2009”.

Tags: Eni Norge AS, Goliat, Sevan Marine