As the oil industry offshore Norway in 1996 will move into water depths in excess of 1000 m on the continental margin offshore Mid-Norway, new challenges arise with respect to geohazard, foundation solutions and possible foundation problems. It is an urgent need for geotechnical data from this virgin area as information are presently only available from a few geological borings. The soil properties and behaviour may differ significantly from earlier developed parts on the Norwegian continental shelf, as the Vøring Basin has both biogenic and terrigenous sediments that have never been subjected to ice loading and glacial erosion. This paper provides a first indication of the geotechnical soil properties on a regional scale of the seafloor based on laboratory testing of soil samples taken on a site survey in 1994.
In the 15 concession round, new huge and prospective areas were opened for petroleum activities in deep waters offshore Mid-Norway in the Vøring and the Møre Basins, Figure 1. Earlier geotechnical information from the area is only available from a few scientific geological borings done within the Deep Sea Drilling Program, DSDP (Talwani et al, 1974) and the Ocean Drilling Program, ODP (Eldholm et al, 1987). This paper provides geotechnical soil properties on a regional scale of the seafloor from the Vøring Basin based on test results obtained in 1994. Prior to presentation of the actual data it is given an introduction to the geology of the area and a short discussion of the major geotechnical challenges foreseen. The results presented are also compared with information from the shallow parts of the older scientific borings and with well known soil behaviour from the Gulf of Mexico and the Norwegian Trench in the North Sea.
