The Hyundai Heavy Industries have informed its employees that the Goliat platform will be delayed with another six months. The production unit, which is made for field licenseholder Eni, was originally to start production in the Barents Sea in late 2014. Now, production launch is unlikely to start until mid-2015, at earliest.
All project consultants at the Korean year will have their contracts extended, Offshore.no reports.
As previously reported, there have been a series of are major problems connected with the construction of the floating production unit for the Goliat field.
The yard has reportedly been taking a number of shortcuts which ultimately have lead to reduced technical standards at the project FPSO, the floating production storage and offloading unit. “It is chaos”, a source close to the project told Offshore.no. The Hyundai years is not sufficiently taking Norwegian offshore standards into account and key project personnel do not know enough about Norwegian Arctic waters, critics warn.
When in production, Goliat will be the northernmost oil field on the Norwegian shelf. The project operated by Eni (65%) together with Statoil (35%) is based on 174 million barrels of oil resources. Production is planned to start late 2014.
The launch of the Goliat field will give a boost to oil production in northern Norwegian waters. As illustrated by figures from Patchwork Barents, oil production in waters off northern Norway (county of Nordland) has declined rapidly over many years. While production in the area in year 2000 was more than 18 million tons, it had in 2012 dropped to only 5,3 million tons.
