ByTsvetana Paraskova– Feb 04, 2025, 7:30 AM CST
Following a power outage, Equinor on Tuesday suspended all production at the huge 755,000-bpd Johan Sverdrup oilfield in the North Sea, Western Europe’s biggest, a spokesperson for the Norwegian energy major told Reuters.
Equinor has already started work to repair the outage in the offshore system feeding power to the massive field.
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“Repair work has been initiated, and we are working on a restart plan,” the company’s spokesperson told Reuters, without giving further details.
An outage at the huge oilfield could curb some losses in oil prices, which were down by 2% early on Tuesday as the trade war between the U.S. and China began in earnest. The U.S. tariff of 10% on all Chinese imports took effect today, followed by retaliatory tariffs from China on U.S. products, including LNG, coal, and crude oil.
Johan Sverdrup, the biggest producing oil field in Western Europe, began producing in 2019. The peak production level is seen at 755,000 barrels daily, which is significantly higher than initial peak output expectations of 660,000 bpd. The peak output was hit for the first time in September 2024 when Johan Sverdrup produced 756,000 bpd. The field’s output alone accounts for a third of Norway’s total oil production.
Johan Sverdrup is estimated to have reserves of 2.7 billion barrels of oil equivalents, and the entire field is now in production. Phase One of Johan Sverdrup was put online in October 2019, and Phase Two came on stream in December 2022.
Thanks to high levels of electrification, Johan Sverdrup has some of the lowest CO2 emissions of any oilfield in the world, according to Equinor.
The power outage on Tuesday followed a similar outage in the middle of November 2024, when Johan Sverdrup was again halted for a few days until the problem was fixed. Back then, production at the oilfield was gradually restarted over the course of several days.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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