Eni Says Goliat May Cost Less Than the $4.9 Billion Budget
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By Marianne Stigset
Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Eni SpA, Italy’s biggest energy company, said developing the Arctic Goliat field may cost less than the estimated budget of 28 billion kroner ($4.9 billion).
“The contracts that have come in so far have been lower than what we had budgeted for,” Arild Glaeserud, technical general manager for Eni in Norway, said at a seminar in Oslo today. “The market is hungry” for contracts, he said.
Eni and partner Statoil ASA are starting development of the Goliat, 85 kilometers (52 miles) northwest of Hammerfest on Norway’s northern tip in the Barents Sea, after receiving approval from the Norwegian parliament in June.
Glaeserud declined to specify by how much the budget for Norway’s first Arctic oilfield may be revised down.
The company in February picked the design model of Sevan Marine ASA’s floating production, storage and offloading vessel model, which has production capacity of 100,000 barrels a day. A deadline for contracts on the production unit as well as for an electricity cable to the mainland was last month and Eni expects contracts to be awarded in the first quarter.
Construction is scheduled to start next year and production in 2013. The company plans to drill 22 wells starting in the third quarter of 2011, Glaeserud said. The field is expected to be in production for 15 to 20 years.
Eni is operator of the field and owns 65 percent, while Norway’s Statoil holds the rest.
Aker Solutions ASA in September won a contract worth about 2.3 billion kroner to deliver a subsea production system, while Technip SA got a 200 million-euro ($297 million) contract for supplying and installing flowlines and riser systems.
Norway, the world’s sixth-largest oil exporter, is opening more of its unexplored north as crude output declines in the North Sea. Goliat, discovered in 2000, is estimated to hold 175 million barrels of oil and 8 billion standard cubic meters of gas, according to Eni.
To contact the reporter on this story: Marianne Stigset in Oslo at mstigset@bloomberg.net;
Last Updated: November 5, 2009 09:24 EST
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