When I attended my first media briefing for E&P magazine, I wasn’t expecting to see a rendering of something that looked like it was meant for the moon. I had to wonder how far off something so out of this world could be from completion.

The rendering was of a subsea factory – a full-fledged processing facility built entirely on the seafloor – and the briefing was to discuss the role this latest innovation in offshore technology would play in Statoil’s future.

The factory, set for completion in 2020, is being built on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. Once it has proved successful, the company plans to replicate it in the arctic region and offshore Brazil, Tanzania, and elsewhere.

Statoil is known for its advanced technology and its ability to produce in extremely difficult environments. It’s also known for its spirit of innovation, which pervades its corporate culture. Encouraging its people to collaborate, push boundaries, and think outside the norm has resulted in an engaged workforce with an impressive toolbox to use in production. In turn, dreams like Statoil’s subsea factory are quickly becoming reality.

During the briefing, Margareth Ovrum’s passion for the subsea factory – her “baby,” she calls it – shone through. Ovrum is Statoil’s executive vice president of technology, projects, and drilling. For Ovrum, completing the subsea factory will be the culmination of her Statoil career, which spans 32 years. Ovrum said the technology being developed for Statoil’s subsea factory is extremely important to the company’s future plans for growth. The factory is expected to increase oil recovery and energy efficiency in subsea environments, where this is often a challenging task.

“All of our fields, both the new ones and existing ones, need subsea technology to accelerate and enhance production going forward,” she said. “Subsea is perfect; it’s where we’ll find our future oil and gas reserves. They are farther from land, in deeper water, and in colder and harsher environments.”

Because the rich reserves are located in these harsh subsea environments, Ovrum said developing new technologies to produce them is business-critical. Statoil recently announced its new partnership with NASA to explore a wide range of technologies that can assist the energy company in its subsea efforts.

As Statoil continues to push its boundaries and explore new frontiers for production, who better to partner with than NASA, which is known for its ability to develop technology and materials that can withstand harsh conditions? It’s only logical.

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