Norwegian oil and gas company Aker BP has awarded subsea contracts for the Kobra East & Gekko (KEG) development in Norway to Subsea 7 and Aker Solutions.
The contact comes days after Aker BP as the operator filed a plan for development and operation for the North Sea project, offshore Norway, to the Norwegian authorities.
Total investments in the whole project are projected at around NOK 8 billion (appr. USD 1 billion) and production is scheduled to start in the first quarter of 2024. Recoverable reserves in KEG are estimated at around 40 million barrels of oil equivalents (mmboe).
The project, which includes two discoveries Kobra East and Gekko in licence 203, will be developed with subsea installations connected to the Alvheim FPSO vessel, located in the Norwegian part of the central North Sea near the UK border.
The contracts awarded to Aker Solutions and Subsea 7 include engineering, procurement, fabrication and installation of subsea facilities for the KEG project, including pipelines, umbilicals, subsea x-mas trees, structures and subsea control modules.
Total investments linked to these contracts are projected at around NOK 1.7 billion (around $194 million). Installation campaigns are scheduled to start in the second quarter of 2022 and to be completed 1st quarter of 2024.
Aker BP expects that CO2 emissions per barrel will be cut in half and oil production from the Alvheim FPSO will double when KEG comes on
stream.
In a separate statement, Subsea 7 provided more details on the award.
"The project involves a subsea tie-back of approximately 8 kilometers to the Alvheim FPSO, via the existing Kneler B subsea manifold. The contract scope includes engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI) of the pipelines, spools, protection cover and tie-ins using key vessels from Subsea 7’s fleet. The production pipeline is a pipe-in-pipe design," the company said .
Fabrication of the pipelines will take place at Subsea 7’s spoolbase at Vigra, Norway, and offshore operations are expected to take place in 2022 and 2023.
The Alvheim field (PL203), consists of the Kneler, Boa, Kameleon and East Kameleon structures, as well as the Viper-Kobra structures and Gekko discoveries and is also host to other developments in the area. PL203 license owners are Aker BP (operator), ConocoPhillips Scandinavia AS and Lundin Energy Norway AS. 
