Marketex Offshore Constructions will construct subsea metal structures for a new oil and gas field in Norway
Thursday 1 June 2023
Marketex Offshore Constructions, a subsidiary of BLRT Grupp, and the Norwegian company Aker Solutions have signed a construction contract for subsea templates for the Yggdrasil project, the next major oil and gas field development in the North Sea.
Marketex Offshore Constructions (MOC) will build nine subsea templates, with production scheduled for 2023 and delivery to the customer planned for 2024 and 2025. These foundations will be the largest subsea structures constructed by MOC to date. The project will require 340,000 hours of welding, assembly, and machining, which will be carried out in the company’s newly equipped production facilities in Tallinn, built specifically for such projects in 2020.
“A subsea foundation is a large steel structure used initially for well-drilling and later as a foundation for other critical subsea equipment. During the equipment installation at sea, everything must fit perfectly. Therefore, many factors were considered when choosing the contractor, including the presence of similar successful complex projects in our portfolio, alongside experience, lead time, quality, and safety requirements,” explains Nadezda Vassiljeva, a member of the Board at Marketex Offshore Constructions.
Yggdrasil (which is the Norse name for the Tree of Life) is operated by Aker BP and is the next major planned oil and gas field development in the North Sea, with estimated hydrocarbon resources of more than 650 million barrels of oil equivalent. This project will set a new modern standard for operating oil and gas fields. The installations in Yggdrasil will be operated remotely and the area will be periodically unmanned. The development of Yggdrasil will utilize shore power, resulting in low levels of CO2 and NOx emissions in the area.