Wärtsilä has won a contract to install its patented electrostatic oil separation system at Statoil’s giant Johan Sverdrup field, the largest new oil development on the Norwegian continental shelf since the 1980s, the company said in its press release.
At the end of June, Wärtsilä signed a contract with Midsund Bruk, a subsidiary of Fjords Processing of Norway, to supply its Vessel Internal Electrostatic Coalescer (VIEC) system, which helps separate oil and water in a faster, more efficient, and environmentally safer way. The system is to be delivered by April 2016.
“It’s a very significant order,” said Marius Trebler, Business Development Manager at Wärtsilä Gas Solutions in Norway. “Daily production from Johan Sverdrup Phase 1 is estimated to 315.00 – 380.00 barrels per day, and all of this production will go through our system.”
The oil field is named after Johan Sverdrup, the politician credited with the introduction of parliamentarism in Norway in 1884. More than a century later, his nation’s state-owned oil giant Statoil is investing heavily in the field, which lies some 140 km west of Stavanger, almost halfway to Orkney in Scotland.
“Statoil has installed VIEC in their test loop, so whenever they test an oil in this loop the oil is dehydrated with VIEC. They can see for themselves the effectiveness of the performance of the equipment.”
Johan Sverdrup, which is scheduled to start production in late 2019, will be the 11th Statoil project to have VIEC installed.
In a conventional oil and gas production facility, water and gas is first separated from oil by gravity in a two-stage production separator scheme. The oil then passes to an electrostatic coalescer vessel where a powerful electrical field is used to force any remaining emulsified water droplets into larger drops that then sediment out of the oil phase.
With VIEC, banks of insulated electrodes are instead installed within any or both of the gravity-based separator vessels themselves, breaking up emulsions of water in oil at an earlier stage.
“VIEC is one of a kind because we have a patent which defines putting electrostatic modules inside the vessel,” Trebler said. “No other company can do it the same way we do it.”