Equinor makes commercial natural gas and oil discovery in North Sea ahead of Hammerfest LNG re-start
Equinor, the Norwegian oil and gas company whose Hammerfest LNG plant is scheduled to resume production in mid-May, has made a new natural gas and oil discovery in the North Sea.
State-owned Equinor is the operator of production licence 293 B close to the Troll and Fram area where the find was made.
“Based on preliminary estimates the size of the discovery is between 4 and 8 million standard cubic metres of recoverable oil equivalent, or 25-50 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent,” said the company.
Temporarily called Kveikje, this is the sixth discovery in this area since the third quarter of 2019.
“Up to more than 300 million barrels of oil equivalent were proven in the five former discoveries,” said Equinor.
The discovery comes as the Hammerfest LNG plant is scheduled to come back on stream following repairs from a fire in September 2020 and will provide more than 6 billion cubic metres of gas per year from the Barents Sea to European customers.
“We are very pleased to make another discovery in this area that we regard to be commercial,” said Lill H. Brusdal, Equinor’s vice president for the Troll area’s exploration and production.
Tie-in
“As we did with the other discoveries in this area, we will consider tying this discovery to the Troll B or C platform,” added Brusdal.
“By utilising the existing infrastructure, we will be able to recover these volumes at a low cost and with low emissions,” she stated.
“There were several drilling targets in the exploration well. After Kveikje was discovered, drilling continued to the next target in the upper part of the Cretaceous stratigraphic sequence,” said Equinor.
The well was drilled by “Deepsea Stavanger” and the latest plans are for Equinor to drill another exploration well in this area this year.
The licence owners are Equinor (51 percent), Norwegian firm DNO AS (29 percent), Japan’s Idemitsu (10 percent) and London-listed Longboat Energy (10 percent).
Equinor’s exploration strategy is to explore for volumes in mature areas, where discoveries can be tied into existing infrastructure to maximise the value of investments.
“We will drill between 20 and 30 exploration wells each year moving forward,” said the company.
“Around 80 percent of the exploration wells will be drilled in familiar areas near existing infrastructure, but certain new areas and ideas will be tested.,” said the Stavanger-based company.
