OSLO - Norwegian oil major Statoil has awarded Samsung Heavy industries an $888 million contract for two platform decks on the giant Johan Sverdrup field in the North Sea, it said on Tuesday. The contract includes fabrication of decks for both the process and riser platforms for the Sverdrup field, a discovery with up to 3 billion barrels of oil equivalents that will cost as much as $28 billion to develop fully. “They (Samsung Heavy Industries) have provided a competitive bid in a tough international competition,” Margareth Oevrum, executive vice president for Technology, projects and drilling at Statoil, said in a statement. Other competitors for the platform deck contracts included Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding, trade weekly Upstream reported in May. . All contracts for the four platform decks have now been awarded. The decks for the drilling and accommodation platforms were awarded to the two Norwegian firms Aibel and Kvaerner respectively. Sverdrup, Europe’s costliest offshore energy project, could operate for 50 years, giving a boost to Norway’s declining oil industry. Statoil has been recommended as operator of the field by the other partners including Lundin Petroleum, Petoro, Det norske and Maersk Oil, a unit under Denmark’s A.P. Moeller-Maersk.