Two oil and gas industry heavyweights are to link up to form a new subsea production alliance.
Norwegian Aker Solutions and Houston-based Baker Hughes have forged the joint venture to develop technology focused on boosting output, increasing recovery rates and reducing costs for subsea fields.
“Deepwater subsea fields have so far been characterised by low recovery rates, and new discoveries in deeper and more hostile environments are making these fields even more costly to develop,” said Baker Hughes chief executive Martin Craighead.
“The single-digit recovery rates currently being achieved at many of these fields don’t support a sustainable business model.
“By joining forces, Baker Hughes and Aker Solutions will identify and integrate the most effective combinations of in-well and subsea technologies, enabling greater production rates – efficiently and economically – from subsea fields.”
The non-incorporated alliance will bring together Aker’s subsea production expertise and processing systems with Baker Hughes’s experience in well completions and artificial-lift technology.
Aker Solutions’ Svenn Ivar Fure and Brage Johannessen, of Baker Hughes, will lead the alliance for their respective companies as general managers.
The alliance core team will be based in Houston.
Both firms have operations in the north-east, with Aker’s 3,600 making it one of the biggest employers in the region.
The partnership will also focus on reducing risk through improving the industry’s well-intervention capabilities.
Oyvind Eriksen, Aker Solutions’ executive chairman, said: “Our joint commitment will strengthen the business of each company and help our customers unlock the vast values that come from subsea production.
“Subsea factory development is a key focus for Aker Solutions and the partnership with Baker Hughes will provide critical capabilities that will help us develop technologies to create a fully functioning subsea production system which will improve recovery rates and lower costs for oil producers.”