Kristiansund won the mid-Norwegian struggle over involvement in offshore operations. Many years of intensive work gained it the role as base and later operations centre for parts of the oil industry in the Norwegian Sea. A key requirement was an airport.

Efforts to turn Kristiansund into an oil base were driven by a small clique of forward-looking residents, who saw opportunities for the town as the “mid-Norway oil centre” from an early stage.

“Oil fever” gripped Norway in the early 1970s, and a number of small oil companies were established by selling “people’s shares” to the general public. Any and all could by this stock, and the opportunities to cash in were seen as good.

The Norwegian continental shelf (NCS) above the 62nd parallel – the northern limit of the North Sea – was opened for exploration drilling in 1979. But it took acrimonious political disputes to reach this point.

Oil and gas activities represent the most important industry in Kristiansund. They are also crucial for the town’s airport and not least for the construction and operation of its heliport.

Activity on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS) had become so large by the early 1980s that key politicians were concerned it could damage other industries in Norway. Several decisions by the Storting (parliament) were to affect planning and design for Draugen.

Norwegian Contractors built up a very active concrete technology community in Norway from the mid-1980s. The most visible reminder of its commitment to material, product and production development is the Leaning Tower at Hinnavågen in Stavanger.

Three companies were given a licence in March 1984 to explore for and produce petroleum in block 6407/9, where the Draugen field was subsequently discovered.

Shell was appointed operator of production licence 093 in Norway’s eighth offshore licensing round. The first exploration well on this acreage indicated a big potential for a commercial discovery.

Trondheim had ambitions in the mid-1980s of building up an oil industry, and threw itself into the fight to secure the operations organisation for Draugen. That effort failed. The question is why.

Shell declared the Draugen field commercial in May 1987. It had then assessed many different platform solutions since the second appraisal well in August 1985.

A sorry picture of conditions in Kristiansund was painted by mayor Øyvind Jensen in an article which appeared during the autumn of 1988 in Dagbladet – an Oslo daily with a nationwide readership. “Are we going to be living in a ghost town?” he asked.

A/S Norske Shell opened its industry office in Kristiansund on Friday 17 November 1989. With Draugen due to be the first Norwegian field brought on stream outside the North Sea, this event was historic not only for the host town but also for the whole region.

Stavanger’s Rosenberg Verft yard won the job of assembling the Draugen topsides in early 1990. This massive jigsaw formed an integrated structure, with components and equipment packages put together at the construction site.

Petroleum minister Eivind Reiten had nothing but praise for Norske Shell’s exemplary conduct when he laid the foundation stone for the Draugen platform on 28 August 1990.

A competition was staged within the Shell system to come up with a name for its Halten Bank field before it came on stream – and Draugen emerged as the winner.

The concrete gravity base structure (GBS) for the Sleipner A platform sank to the bottom of the Gands Fjord outside Stavanger during a test submersion on 23 August 1991.

While the Draugen operations organisation was setting up shop in Kristiansund and Shell laid its plans to bring the field on stream, the company attracted great attention in Norway with a new advertising campaign.

Relocating to a new town can often be a demanding business, but transferring 200 employees with their families almost 900 kilometres further north is even more challenging.

Mating the concrete support structure and topsides for the Draugen facility and installing it on the field were not entirely without complications.
Mating and tow-out.

The very first oil produced from the Norwegian Sea began flowing at 00.40 on 19 October 1993 – an important time, date and event in Norway’s petroleum history.

Draugen had been on stream for almost a month when the field had to be shut down because oil was observed on the sea around the brand-new platform – the first in the Norwegian Sea.

HM King Harald V performed the official opening of Draugen on 1 December 1993. He pressed the button at 12.15 to symbolise the field coming on stream 145 kilometres north-west of Kristiansund.

Only a month passed before Draugen had to shut down again when oil was detected inside the concrete shaft on 15 December because of a leak in one of the risers carrying up the wellstream.

Norske Shell og Norwegian Contractors (NC) fikk et nytt problem å hanskes med i mai 1994 – et halvt år etter Draugen var satt i produksjon. Plattformen – som sto på et bein, var avhengig overtrykk under plattformen for å sikre balansen uansett vær og vind.

Trond Jøran Pedersen, coach for Norway’s national ski jumping team, was caught by the police on 12 September 1994 driving a motorbike at 179 kilometres per hour in an 80-kilometre zone.

Consulting engineer Olav Olsen was presented in 1994 with the highly regarded Gustave Magnel gold medal on the basis of his work with the concrete gravity base structure (GBS) for Draugen.

A flowline linking the Draugen platform with the southern water injection template (SWIT) in 230 metres of water was found in June 1995 to have broken in two. Shell had no idea of the cause.

Draugen output increased sharply on 29 June 1995, but this was far from accidental – new production and water injection wells had been drilled and brought on stream.

Drilling well A5 had been completed and the Xmas tree – a set of valves – was to be placed on top. To do this, a drill pipe was screwed to the tree where the swab valve sat and the threads fitted.

A big battle was fought over the bill for fabricating the Draugen platform topsides at the Kværner Rosenberg yard in Stavanger. The dispute ultimately had to be settled by arbitration.

An error which left a valve standing open caused 1.2 million litres of gas to be driven under high pressure into platform areas on Draugen where people were working.

On the last evening of the second millennium, a tremendous show was staged on Draugen which probably had no match elsewhere on the Norwegian continental shelf.

A second 10-inch flexible flowline ruptured on 13 January 2000. While the previous incident in 1995 had involved Draugen’s southern water injection template (SWIT), the new break happened with the link to the northern template (NWIT).

Great was the rejoicing when A/S Norske Shell first refined its own crude in Norway in 1967, with the official opening of the new facility at Sola outside Stavanger taking place the year after.

The results of testing production well A4 on the Draugen platform for output capacity were awaited with great anticipation.

Permission to inject Draugen gas in Husmus was limited in duration. A new solution had to be found.

Norway was hit by an extreme cold spell in the winter of 2001, with temperatures as low as -43.5°C at inland locations. Thermometers in Kristiansund also registered record lows.

The main crane on the Draugen platform was operated with great eagerness and a big smile by Christian Democrat party leader Kjell Magne Bondevik during the 2001 general election campaign.

Several critical conditions occurred during a Nato exercise in March 2002. One involved two Italian Air Force fighters and a helicopter from CHC Helikopter Service.

Draugen’s emergency response procedures were put to the test on Friday 13 December 2002, after a fire threat had been reported on one of the other Norwegian Sea facilities.

Drilling new seabed wells and tying them back to the Draugen platform was planned by Shell around 2000 in order to boost production and extend the field’s producing life even further.

A small oil slick was discovered near the Rogn South subsea facility, five-six kilometres from the Draugen platform, and an underwater camera was lowered to investigate.

An oil slick about one nautical mile in circumference was observed late in the evening of 19 May 2003. This was the third-largest crude spill on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS) at the time.

A helicopter was flying from Kvernberget airport to Draugen when a door to the passenger cabin fell off. Nineteen passengers and two pilots were on board, but nobody was injured.

Draugen has always been a place where humour has played its part in the working environment, and made an important contribution to wellbeing on board.

Storms with wind speeds well above hurricane force struck the Halten Bank in January 2005. In itself, this weather posed no threat to either platform or production on Draugen.

The field was shut down again after a minor leak was found in a condensate pipeline on the platform. Output was suspended for safety’s sake, but none of the 70 people on board were evacuated.

It does not happen often. But a helicopter en route from Åsgard B to Kristiansund with 18 people on board was hit by lightning on 15 March 2005 and made an emergency landing on Draugen. Nobody was hurt.

Shell acquired the operatorship of production licence (PL) 255 on the Halten Bank on 12 May 2000 with the aim of finding additional reserves to supplement the Draugen field.

The freefall lifeboats on Draugen created problems when it transpired that their superstructure was unable to cope with the stresses experienced when being launched into the sea.

A break occurred in the loading hose while discharging oil from Draugen to the Navion Scandia shuttle tanker, allowing three to 10 cubic metres of oil to escape to the sea.

Nobody was hurt when four people ended up in the sea after a man-overboard (MOB) boat overturned near the Draugen platform.

Wind speeds up to 40 knots combined with temperatures down to -7°C proved too much for the Draugen platform, and production had to be shut down on 22 February 2010.

An undesirable incident occurred on Draugen during a wireline operation on 4 December 2010 to replace a gas lift valve with a new type.

Many people are unable to handle the transition from winter to summer time. The same has applied to the control system on the Draugen platform.

The honour of lifting the one-thousandth cargo of crude from Draugen fell to shuttle tanker Grena in 2013, when it loaded 827 530 barrels on the field.

Part of a crane on the south side of the Draugen platform broke during trials, following an extension to the boom in order to lengthen its reach. Part of the extension with a 15-tonne test bag and rope went into the sea.

The quantity of highly polluting lubricating oil being released from the Draugen platform caused the Norwegian Environment Agency (NEA) to react.

The Draugen platform has produced oil and gas with an overall value of roughly NOK 250 billion over the 25 years since it came on stream.