Statoil Plans Turnarounds for North Sea Fields

Statoil is planning to carry out turnarounds on several oil and gas fields in 2010. Most of them will take place in August and September.

Statoil also aims to make improvements to expand the interval between the turnarounds. The work will be carried out in a limited period of time, which sets high requirements on planning and work preparations by Statoil and the supplier.

Extensive effort

The planned replacement of a large heat exchanger on the Snøhvit LNG plant on the island of Melkøya in northern Norway has been postponed from the summer of 2010 to the second quarter of 2011.

A minor turnaround of a much shorter duration will be carried out on Melkøya in the third quarter of 2010.

The turnarounds' impact on Statoil's production volume has been taken into consideration in the guiding presented at Statoil's strategy update on February 11, 2010.

Increasing production

In addition to improving the installations' robustness a number of the actions included in this year's turnarounds are in line with Statoil's objective of improved recovery of the resources in mature fields.

Even if the turnarounds lead to production stop and income loss in the periods affected, they contribute to increased production and earnings in the longer term.

Turnarounds are to be carried out on the following installations: Sleipner A, B and T; Snorre A and B; Troll A, B and C; Kvitebjørn; Norne; Åsgard B; Kristin; Njord; and Heidrun.