Subsea World News has put together a recap of the most interesting articles from the previous week (September 01 – September 06).

Aker Solutions notified employees that it has become necessary to reduce the workforce capacity in its Norwegian subsea business because of a continued market slowdown.

About 500 permanent positions at facilities in Fornebu, Stokke, Moss and Tranby in Norway may be affected. Adjustments will be made through normal employee turnover, reassignments to other parts of the company and redundancies.

Subsea 7 has been awarded a subsea, umbilical, riser and flowline (SURF) contract by Maersk Oil with a value in excess of USD 150 million for the Culzean development.

The contract scope includes project management, engineering, procurement, construction and installation of a 22″ diameter 52 km gas export pipeline connected to the Central Area Transmission System (CATS), and a 3.6 km pipe-in-pipe providing insulation for the transportation of the condensate to the in-field FSO.

UK oilfield services player, Expro, is forced to make further job cuts as a response to the progressing challenges on the market.

In addition to workforce reduction announced earlier in March, Expro plans to make approximately 60 further redundancies across its Europe and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) operations. According to the company, the majority of these are expected to be in the UK.

Heerema Fabrication Group (HFG) has been awarded the Engineering, Procurement & Construction contract from Maersk Oil North Sea UK for the Culzean jackets for both the central processing facilities platform and the utility & living quarter platform.

This contract is the second HFG has won for the Culzean project. On October 21, 2014 the Procurement & Construction contract of the Culzean wellhead platform jacket, wellhead access deck and access ways was awarded.

Norway’s GC Rieber Shipping has terminated a charter agreement for the subsea vessel “Polar Onyx” by reason of Ceona`s default.

Namely, Ceona has provided security, by way of cash deposit in a Norwegian bank, equivalent to nine month`s hire, towards GC Rieber Shipping for the fulfillment of Ceona`s obligations under the charter agreement.