Statoil selects GE to remove seawater sulfate for Johan Castberg project

Statoil ASA selected a consortium to provide a system to remove seawater sulfate from Injection seawater to protect Statoil’s production wells at the Johan Castberg project in the Barents Sea offshore Norway.

GE Water & Process Technologies and Halvorsen TEC will provide front-end engineering and design work for the system. The Johan Castberg project (formerly Skrugard) is 100 km north of Snohvit field.

This is GE’s first order of its seawater sulfate removal technology for the offshore oil and gas industry. Halvorsen TEC is a subsidiary of Halvorsen Group AS. Statoil has said it plans to ramp up efforts at Johan Castberg this year (OGJ Online, Aug. 31, 2016).

Heiner Markhoff, president and chief executive officer of GE Water & Process Technologies, said, “Sulfate removal is important to help ensure that production assets remain free of barium and strontium scale, which would precipitate if untreated seawater is injected.”

The sulfate removal unit (SRU) will allow Statoil to inject 2,000 cu m/hr of seawater at less than 20 ppm of sulfate content and less than 20 ppm of oxygen.

GE also will provide a process guarantee for the SRU and a service package including remote monitoring of the entire seawater injection plant.

The FEED portion of the project will last 6 months. Equipment delivery is expected to take place mid-2019 with oil production expected in 2022. The project is divided into two phases: Aker Solutions will oversee FEED work during Phase 1, and the FPSO equipment will be fabricated and delivered during Phase 2.