Ormen Lange awards large pipe freight contracts

SHIPPING ORMEN PIPE: The Olympic Orion is one of several ships that will transport pipe to pipeline-laying vessels on the Ormen Lange and Langeled development projects. Langeled will be the world's longest subsea pipeline.

(Aug. 6, 2004) The Ormen Lange and Langeled partnerships have awarded pipe freight contracts with a combined value of NOK 285 million to Olympic Shipping, District Offshore, Solstad Shipping and Havila Shipping.

The agreement with the four Norwegian shipping companies entails transporting pipe from four bases along the Norwegian coastline, and one base in England.

The pipe will be delivered to the pipeline-laying vessels Solitaire and LB200 in connection with the laying of pipeline for Hydro’s Ormen Lange development in the Norwegian Sea, and the Langeled gas pipeline project.

Langeled – which will extend some 1,200 kilometers to become the world’s longest subsea pipeline – will be laid from a land-based gas treatment facility under construction at Nyhamna in the Norwegian County of Møre og Romsdal, via the Sleipner platform in the North Sea, to a gas receiving plant at Easington in NE England.

Hydro is the development operator of the Ormen Lange project, including the transport system. Statoil has entered into a contract - on behalf of the Ormen Lange and Langeled partnership – to plan and carry out the pipeline laying work in cooperation with Hydro. Statoil has also signed a NOK 15 million contract with the same shipping companies to transport pipe on the Statoil-operated Snøhvit field development project in the Barents Sea.

The pipe freight contracts include six vessels: Olympic Orion, Olympic Princess, Skandi Caledonia and Skandi Rona, and two new ships from Havila and Solstad. All the vessels will be employed during the laying periods. The pipe-laying periods will last from around mid-March to September/October 2005, and from March to August/September 2006.

On the sourthern part of the Langeled work, the pipe will be shipped from Farsund, in south-west Norway, and Hartlepool, England. The pipe for the northern part of the task will be transported from Farsund, Ågotnes, in western Norway, and Måløy, in north-western Norway. Pipe for Ormen Lange will be shipped from Kristiansund, in north-west Norway.

Partners in the Ormen Lange field are Hydro (operator of development phase), Shell (operator of operations phase), Petoro, Statoil, BP and ExxonMobil. The Langeled partnership consists of the same companies plus ConocoPhillips.