Aker Solutions and ABB have agreed to work together on subsea processing solutions, bringing together their strengths in subsea, power and automation technologies.
The cooperation will integrate Aker Solutions' subsea capabilities and ABB's subsea power and automation system expertise to help enhance how production equipment on the seafloor is powered and controlled by applications on shore or platforms, lowering costs and enabling economically viable production at fields far offshore from existing infrastructure.
"Power and automation are crucial to improving the effectiveness of compression, boosting and other solutions for increasing oil and gas recovery from subsea fields," said Peter Terwiesch, president of ABB's process automation division. "This collaboration is part of our Next Level Strategy to engage in value-adding partnerships and will bring together the expertise and technology needed to help better serve customers and strengthen our subsea power and automation solutions."
The cooperation is an outcome of several years of joint work that includes landmark developments such as the 2015 delivery of the world's first subsea compression system for the Statoil-operated Åsgard field offshore Norway. Initial focus areas will include developing better subsea compression systems at lower costs and in less time.
The collaboration will target opportunities globally, building on the companies' presence in major oil and gas markets to meet customer needs worldwide. It will be headquartered in Oslo, Norway.