The Norwegian oil company awarded its first contract for the supply of HFI pipe to Corus Tubes in January 2002, and the company will manufacture 80km of HFI linepipe for Statoil’s Kvitebjorn project off the coast of Norway. Because of the tight dimensional tolerances and cost-effective manufacturing processes achieved with Corus Tubes’ HFI products, Statoil expects a reduced welding time on the pipelay vessel and increased pipelay rate, both making a significant positive contribution to the overall pipeline cost. “Although this is the first HFI pipeline for Statoil, this project underlines our continued success in the production of quality HFI pipe since the early 1990s. We have now supplied nearly 750km of HFI linepipe to a range of major clients such as Phillips Petroleum, BP, Shell, and Saipem, including many technically-challenging projects,” Russell Codling, Corus Tubes’ offshore sales manager, said recently. The pipeline will export oil from the Kvitebjorn field and connect to an existing subsea Y located on the Troll oil pipeline II. This new line has been designed to operate at an elevated temperature and, in order to match the bore of the Troll pipeline tee, the new 90-km line is sized at a non-standard 385mm internal diameter. In addition to the 80-km HFI section, Corus Tubes is manufacturing a further 13km of thick-wall submerged-arc-welded (SAW) pipe at the same bore size. The ability to economically produce this constant bore has been achieved through Cores Tubes' flexible manufacturing capabilites at its 20-in HFI and 42-in SAW pipe mills Hartlepool in the UK.