“That was on the Gullfaks field in the North Sea, and marked the start of a formidable process of technological development,” she says.

“Our goal is to take elements from today’s platform solutions so that we can build a subsea factory in the not too distant future.”

Over the past quarter-century, Statoil has been one of the most important drivers in developing subsea technology together with suppliers and partners.

“We’ve been involved in driving a number of the most important breakthroughs in the subsea industry on a global scale,” says Kindem.

“That’s made us the first to try out a number of solutions which have subsequently been adopted by other operators around the world.

“Without subsea technology, it wouldn’t have been possible to develop a number of our fields – including Åsgard in the Norwegian Sea and Troll Oil in the North Sea.”

Seabed separation is an example of technology untested until Statoil dared to try it out with a pilot project on Troll and in full scale on Tordis. This solution is now being used worldwide.

“We’ve constantly found innovative answers to challenges which have arisen as our knowledge of the Norwegian continental shelf steadily improves,” says Kindem.

“In addition to subsea separation, we’ve developed technology for raw seawater injection on Tyrihans. And our Snøhvit project in the Barents Sea was the first to send oil and gas for 140 kilometres to land in the same pipeline.”

Wells

Statoil currently operates 487 subsea wells on the NCS, accounting for 50% of its total production, and brings an average of 20 more of them on stream every year.

“We’re now taking the expertise we’ve built up on the NCS with us internationally, which makes us an attractive partner in many demanding new areas,” notes Kindem.

“The vision for our seabed commitment is ‘longer, deeper, colder’, because that’s where we see that future resources are to be found.

“We then want to take subsea technology even further. That’ll be essential if we’re going to reach our target of producing 2.5 million barrels per day in 2020.”

Standardisation of seabed equipment has been important in achieving fast-track developments, which draw on Statoil’s many years of experience with subsea technology.

Through this commitment, the group aims to bring a number of small discoveries into production more quickly while simultaneously reducing costs.

“Yesterday’s innovation becomes today’s standard,” Kindem notes. The next technological leap is due in 2015, when Åsgard becomes the world’s first field with subsea gas compression.

“That’s a very interesting technology project, and a further step along the road to a subsea factory,” Kindem observes.