The Aker group had been commissioned by Mobil in August 1974 to fabricate and outfit the topside for Statfjord A. It had already undertaken similar contracts – Vindholmen Verft in Arendal had built the topside for Beryl A and Aker Verdal north of Trondheim was building a similar structure for Shell/Esso’s Brent B. Both these platforms were destined for the UK sector of the North Sea.

Preparations for building the Statfjord B platform were well under way in the autumn of 1976. But the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, as the regulator responsible for offshore safety, had its own views on the project. It expressed these in a letter sent to operator Mobil on 11 November 1976, which came to change all the plans.

Statfjord B represented a new generation of Condeep gravity base structures (GBS). When built, it was the world’s largest human construction in history and much bigger than the Statfjord A concrete support structure.