The Ormen Lange field has now come on stream and, as a result, the field's operatorship is to be transferred to Norske Shell, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, according to the agreement between the field's development partners.
Morten Ruud, executive vice president of projects for StatoilHydro, said: As operator for the development since 1999, it is a delight to state that it has gone according to plan. Production has good regularity and everything is working satisfactorily. We can now confidently hand over operatorship of Ormen Lange to Norske Shell.
The decision to share the operatorship, with Hydro (now StatoilHydro) as development operator and Norske Shell in charge of the operations phase was taken by the Norwegian ministry of petroleum and energy in December 1999.
The field’s partners include Norske Shell (operator with a 17.04% interest), Norwegian state-owned Petoro (36.48%), StatoilHydro (28.91%), Dong E&P Norge (10.34%) and ExxonMobil Exploration & Production Norway (7.23%).