At the end of June, after two decades of R&D, the 1,700-tonne manifold base for the world’s first subsea compression station was towed from a shipyard at Egersund, on the Norwegian coast, and lowered carefully to the seabed. Installation will continue during 2014, when two dozen process modules will be assembled onto this base with the aid of specially developed handling equipment. If all goes well, the vast 4,800-tonne Åsgard subsea compression station will start-up in early 2015.

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