Aker Solutions has signed a strategic global collaboration agreement with Equinor to ensure mutual and continuous improvement on current and future subsea projects within the domains of safety, quality, technology, execution and cost.

'Aker Solutions and Equinor's ongoing collaboration has consistently generated mutually beneficial technology developments, working process simplifications and standardisations,' says Luis Araujo, chief executive officer at Aker Solutions. 'This agreement formalises the companies' joint ambitions of achieving efficiency and improvement goals.'

Vertical Trees

Several innovative and cost-efficient solutions have materialised from Aker Solutions' and Equinor's history of collaboration. Aker Solutions' newest subsea production system with vertical trees and associated tools were developed in close collaboration with Equinor, designed to be more efficient and reduce life-cycle costs. The subsea equipment is smaller and lighter than previous versions and has now become Equinor's standard solution.

As well as adopting this technology on the Johan Castberg field, Equinor will use trees of the same design on its Troll and Askeladd fields offshore Norway and they have also been commissioned by other operators on the Norwegian Shelf, including Aker BP for the Ærfugl development.