Equinor and its partners have made an oil and gas discovery in a prospect near the Gullfaks field in the northern part of Norway’s North Sea, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate said on Monday.
Equinor, as operator of a production license, and its partners Petoro and OMV made the discovery in the Granat prospect near Gullfaks, 190 kilometres, o1 118 miles, northwest of Bergen.
Preliminary estimates place the Granat discovery at between 1.3 and 3.8 million barrels of oil equivalent.
The licensees will be now considering tying the discovery back to existing infrastructure in the Gullfaks area, said the Norwegian Offshore Directorate, the regulator of the oil industry in Western Europe’s top oil and gas producer.
The so-called infrastructure-led exploration is a major part of Equinor’s efforts to find resources near existing fields with developed infrastructure to boost supply at low costs by tying new discoveries back to operating platforms and fields.
Equinor plans to drill 20 to 30 exploration wells every year, the company said last month when it was awarded 35 new production licences on the Norwegian continental shelf in Norway’s tender for mature exploration areas.
A total of 80% of the exploration will be near existing infrastructure, while 20% will explore new concepts and lesser-known areas, the Norwegian energy major said.
“There is still a lot of energy left on the NCS, but we need new discoveries to curb the expected production decline,” commented Jez Averty, Equinor’s senior vice president for subsurface, the Norwegian continental shelf.
“Phasing in oil and gas from new discoveries to existing infrastructure is a core task going forward,” Averty added.
Despite the best exploration results in four years in 2025, Norway will need even more exploration and discoveries, as well as investment in new oil and gas projects, to reverse an expected decline in output from the late 2020s, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate said last month.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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