Vår Energi and Equinor recently commenced a five-year helicopter-sharing agreement in the North Sea to reduce costs and environmental footprint of crew transport.

The agreement for assigning helicopters was effective from 1 January 2022. It follows an earlier helicopter-sharing initiative between Vår Energi and Equinor in the Barents Sea and reflects the strong established cooperation between two leading oil and gas companies on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.   

“Vår Energi aims to be an active and preferred partner,” says Vår Energi CEO, Torger Rød. 

“This includes capturing opportunities for sharing and collaboration to deliver more efficient operations and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for long-term sustainable production of oil and gas from the Norwegian shelf”.  

Vår Energi operates 12 regular North Sea flights per week with an average of 180 passengers in total. The company is the operator of the Balder FPU (production vessel) and the Ringhorne platform in the North Sea, as well as for the West Phoenix rig, which is drilling new wells on the Balder Future project.  

By coordinating and sharing helicopters and vacant seats, Vår Energi and Equinor seek to optimise the use of the jointly available transport capacity. Eivind Espe, the Operations Support Manager at Vår Energi explains: 

“Safe and efficient transport of personnel to and from the offshore installations is one of the key logistic operations associated with oil and gas production on the Norwegian shelf. Based on the success in north, it was natural to look at expanding our collaboration – a win-win-situation for both operators”.  

Espe informs that Vår Energi is exploring opportunities to establish similar collaborations within other logistics operations, such as supply services where vessel-sharing.