A day after the first steel was cut for the platform, Statoil said it awarded Samsung with an $886 million contract for Johan Sverdrup field development.

Statoil, on behalf of the Johan Sverdrup partners, awarded Samsung with the contract to build the 26,000 ton process and riser platforms, which ensure stabilization during processing at the offshore field.

Oivind Reinertsen, Statoil's project director for Johan Sverdrup, and all of the contracts for the four platforms envisioned for the field have been awarded and more than half of the secondary packages have been doled out to Norwegian companies.

"Johan Sverdrup will be of major significance to the whole of society for at least 50 years into the future," he said in a statement.

Offshore company Odfjell Drilling in February was awarded an engineering contract to build a drilling platform for Johan Sverdrup.

Statoil said the first phase of operations at the field will represent $15 billion in investments. The company estimates the recoverable resources at between 1.4 billion and 2.4 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

Johan Sverdrup is the fifth largest discovery ever made on the Norwegian continental shelf, described by the nation's energy regulator as "gigantic."

Statoil estimates Johan Sverdrup should generate $200 billion in revenues over the next 50 years. Production is slated for 2019, a year later than originally planned.

Samsung will build the platform deck at its shipyard in South Korea.