Semco partnership with ConocoPhillips
MARITIME INDUSTRY: Semco Maritime has entered a five-year frame agreement with ConocoPhillips, for development of all systems within telecommunication for the the Norwegian oil fields Ekofisk and Eldfisk
This is by far the largest and most promising agreement within the telecommunication area for the Danish company, head-quartered in Esbjerg, and it has prospects of a turnover in a three-figure million range.
"ConocoPhillips is aiming at prolonging the Ekofisk field by 40 years, and as their partner we will describe and specify the needed technology for their future telecommunication. As consultant and representative for ConocoPhillips, we will make sure that Ekofisk will get the great and innovative solutions", says the leader of Semco Maritime's Communication Systems, Vice President Vagn Nielsen.
Semco Maritime will dedicate a project team of 10-15 of our experts within this field and during the next 8-10 months they will be joined by three or four Norwegian employees from ConocoPhillips who will be part of the innovation work. Semco Maritime's offices in Norway, Houston, Singapore and Esbjerg will all be involved in this project.
"We have been preferred to bigger competitors because we have the total range of telecommunication competences in-house, including a number of experts within Cisco network systems, who are preferred within the offshore area. The agreement is a huge break-through for us and it will be a challenging and interesting project where we will need all our innovative thinking to define the future systems of ConocoPhillips", says Vagn Nielsen.
The ConocoPhillips-operated Ekofisk and Eldfisk-fields are facing upgrades for billions over the next few year in order to future-proof their oil and gas production. The first project is the world's biggest accommodation platform for Ekofisk, 2/4L, with a capacity of 550 single cabins. It shall be ready in the summer of 2013. Later a production platform for Ekofisk and an accommodation and production platform for Eldfisk will be made. All four platforms must be operational within the years of 2013-2014.
When the new platforms have been planned, the existing plants must be integrated with more than 30 new systems such as transmission, radio, data, access control, registration of personnel, alarm, entertainment and telephony have Integrated Operations as one of their cornerstones with the purpose of controlling most of the production from onshore facilities which means that oil extraction will be made more efficient.
The new framework agreement has been signed by Semco Maritime AS in Norway and ConocoPhillips Scandinavia AS, who are responsible for the operations in Norway and employing a staff of 1.900 people. The agreement includes an option for prolonging the cooperation first for two years and subsequently for further two years. Thus it is a long-term cooperation which will be of great strategic importance to Semco Maritime.
"This agreement is a great acknowledgement of our expertise within telecommunication and an important step for us in the North Sea area, where we would like to become even stronger. Telecommunication is a very globalised area and with the right focus on our skills we have again shown that we are doing well in the global competition", says CEO Steen Brødbæk, Semco Maritime.
Communication Systems has about 40 employees working at our offices in Esbjerg, Dubai, Houston, Singapore and Norwich (UK). The framework agreement with ConocoPhillips will strengthen our basis in Norway where the staff in Stavanger will be increased by even more engineers.
Source: Semco Maritime
