Contract awarded for topsides removal at Valhall field

Aker BP executed the contract under the terms of the frame agreement signed with Allseas in 2017 to provide transport, installation and removal services for the Valhall oil field.

Pioneering Spirit will remove and dispose of the drilling platform 5,950-tonne topsides and 4,350-tonne jacket, production and compression platform, 10,900-tonne topsides and 9,500-t jacket from the Valhall complex, plus the 1,100-tonne Hod topsides and 3,500-tonne jacket from the connected Hod field, 13 km to the south.

At 382 m long and 124 m wide, twin-hulled Pioneering Spirit is the largest construction vessel in the world, representing a step-change in the decommissioning market because of its ability to remove topsides weighing up to 48,000 tonnes in a single lift. It will execute the removal and disposal work between 2021 and 2026, operating in water of approximately 70 m at the Valhall field. Platform preparations are scheduled to commence in 2020, continuing into the 2021 lift season.

Aker BP has also invoked the option for the removal and disposal of the Valhall quarters platform (QP) jacket and the 2/4-G jacket on the Ekofisk field, 24 km north of the Valhall complex. This option was associated with the 2017 award for removing and disposing of the QP topsides, which was completed by Pioneering Spirit in June 2019.

The QP topsides was the first of the three original structures at Valhall to be removed as part of the modernisation of the Valhall field centre by Aker BP. Hod is remotely operated from Valhall and was the first unmanned platform in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea when production started in August 1990.