The turret is moored but pulled around by the ship as the latter weathervanes. The mooring lines then get drawn along and impose a rotational moment on the turret.

Although the turret can cope with a deviation of up to 30 degrees, the limit has been set at seven degrees. Once past this angle, the turret will be jacked back into its neutral position of zero in relation to north.

Wellstreams are carried by flowlines from the subsea templates to flexible risers, which pass through guide tubes in the turret and are hung off at deck level.

The turret has 24 such tubes to accommodate  22 risers, leaving two in reserve.

After passing through chokes which reduce their pressure from 180 to 85 bar, the wellstreams are combined in a manifold on the turret before being split between two pipes running to the swivel stack.

This unit stands centrally on top of the turret and passes the wellstream to the ship, where it enters a three-stage system for separating oil, gas and water.

The two inlet separators have an entry pressure of 85 bar, which falls to 25 bar in the second-stage separator and 2.2 bar in the third. All these units are multiphase.

Once the water and gas have been removed, the crude oil is stored.

Åsgard A can process about 200,000 barrels per day.