Parker Hannifin's instrumentation products division in Barnstaple, UK, is to supply valves and tube connection fittings for the Gina Krog deveopment offshore Norway.
The Statoil-operated Gina Krog (formerly known as Dagny) field development is a gas, condensate and oil field, located in the Norwegian central part of the North Sea, about 30km northwest of Sleipner.
The Gina Krog field will be developed with a fixed platform in 116m water depth and will be tied into the Sleipner facilities for gas export, with oil transported by tankers.
Parker Hannifin anticipates the contract this could result in more than £10million of orders over the next 12 months.This will comprise at least 10,000 individual valves, tube fittings and other components, as well as 10km of tubing.
These will be used to construct liquid and gas instrumentation systems that will measure parameters such as temperature, pressure and flow to help control gas and oil and processing operations.
As well as manufacturing using high-grade stainless steel materials, this project will make extensive use of titanium and the 6Mo steel alloy in key parts of the fluid tubing systems.
These specialist materials are required to combat the threat of corrosion, which is a major problem in harsh offshore environments such as the North Sea.
The specification of the tube connectors for critical parts of the fluid tubing system will be an ability to withstand higher working pressures.
This is being met by Parker's new Autoclave product line, which is the result of an acquisition in 2012. These products are manufactured at a sister factory in Wexford, Ireland.
To help prepare for the higher levels of work, ParkerHannifinhas invested about US$1million in eight additional computer-controlled machining centres for the Barnstaple facility.