Martin Torvald Hovland
Volume 1, Issue 1
Published: December 16, 2025
The first significant discovery of oil on the Norwegian Continental Shelf was the Ekofisk field discovered in 1969. The drilling was done in 77 m water depth at a location in the Mid-North Sea about 250 km from the southern coast of Norway. As there were no previous Norwegian onshore facilities for landing the oil on the Norwegian coast, an export pipeline was built from Ekofisk to Emden, in Germany. However, over the 55 years since then, there have been several hundred oil and gas discoveries made in the three seas hugging the Norwegian coastline, e.g., the North Sea, Norwegian Sea, and the Barents Sea. During the first developments, like Statfjord, Gullfaks, and Heidrun there was a very steep learning curve within many disciplines, such as survey and mapping, feature interpretation and seafloor process knowledge. Therefore, numerous research and development projects (such as the ‘Statfjord Transportation System Project’ STSP) were performed before infrastructure and facility development could be done in earnest.
Deep-Water Coral Reefs, Haltenpipe Development Project (HDP), ‘The Norwegian Model’, World War 1 And 2 Mines, Archaeologically Protected Objects, National Supervision and Control, Development of An Oil Industry, Protection of Nature and Environment, Shallow Gas Hazard
Martin Torvald Hovland, Professor emeritus, Centre for Geobiology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
Hovland, M, T. (2025). Planning, Constructing, and Maintaining a Sustainable Subsea (Marine) Piping, Cable, and Platform (Utility) Infrastructure: Examples from the Norwegian Continental Shelf. Jor Environ Dyn Geo-Sci. 1(1), 01-14.