Offshore engineering firm Aquaterra Energy has secured another major contract on a Norwegian oil field.

The Norwich-based company will deliver early well construction operations for Equinor for the next 16 wells of the Johan Sverdrup field development.

Aquaterra has already supplied services for a previous phase of the project in the third quarter of 2018, and will carry out the work from its Norfolk office near Norwich Airport and its Stavanger office.

The new contract is for the company's Well Start solution, which manages activities in the early stages of well construction, including third-party works, engineering and equipment. The company says the combination of project management, analysis and bespoke and standard products can reduce the difficulties in beginning new wells, and save operators money.

Christian Berven, Norway business development director at Aquaterra Energy, said: "After successfully completing the first stage of the project, we can use our learnings and technical expertise to optimise the new wells.

"Equinor has already reduced the total estimated investment by 6 billion NOK since February of this year. Our goal is to keep costs low by continuing to streamline their early well construction operations to reduce time to first oil."

Johan Sverdrup is one of the largest offshore oil fields on the Norwegian continental shelf, with estimated reserves of up to 3.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

The project is due to be delivered in early 2019, and production is set to begin in late 2022.