On 2 September the Visund Nord IOR (improved oil recovery) project came on stream, two months ahead of schedule. The project has further been delivered with no serious HSE incidents and well below budget.

“It took 21 months from the licence partners chose the concept until production started. This is a new fast-track record for Equinor,” says Torger Rød, senior vice president for project development in Equinor.

Visund Nord IOR is a subsea development with two new wells in a new subsea template, which is tied back to an existing template on Visund. The oil is piped via the existing template to the Visund platform.

The project provides 13.3 million new barrels of oil to the Visund field, 6% more than originally estimated. When the investment decision was made the costs were estimated at NOK 1.5 billion. During the execution phase they were reduced to NOK 1.3 billion.

“We are delivering well within the downward adjusted budget. The project has a competitive break-even price and will be profitable even with an oil price well below the current level,” says project director Tone Kristin Børslid.

Visund Nord IOR is a fast-track development focusing on simplification, standardisation and continous improvement throughout the project phase:

“We are utilising the existing infrastructure effectively as we are routing the oil via the Visund C template which is located 70 metres away. The new template is a copy of this template. We have achieved synergies with other projects and we have even had good weather during the installations, ” she says.

She further underlines that they have never compromised on safety, which is confirmed by the HSE statistics.

TechnipFMC, who also delivered Visund C, has been responsible for everything on the seabed through the EPCI contract, implying that the company has been in charge of engineering, procurement, construction and installation. The two wells were drilled by Odfjell Drilling’s Deepsea Atlantic drilling rig.

The project has now been handed over to the operations unit, providing 13.3 million new barrels of oil that will be produced via a field that will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year:

“Contributing strongly to the Visund field production, Visund Nord IOR is an example of the type of projects that will be more common on the Norwegian continental shelf in the future: Smaller developments tied back to existing infrastructure. This will allow us to develop new discoveries at a lower cost, ensuring both longer field life and jobs on existing fields,” says Gunnar Nakken, senior vice president for operations west in Equinor.

The Visund licence partners are: Equinor Energy A/S (operator) 53.2%, Petoro A/S 30%, ConocoPhillips Skandinavia AS 9.1% and Repsol Norge A/S 7.7%.