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Equinor has made an oil and gas discovery next to the giant Troll field in the North Sea and will continue to explore the area for further potential resources close to existing infrastructure.
The discovery, provisionally named Ringand, is currently estimated to contain between 2 and 12 million barrels of oil equivalent and is only 10 miles (17 kilometers) west of the Troll field, Equinor said on Tuesday.
“It’s a small discovery, but in an interesting area that we plan to further explore with much existing infrastructure,” said Geir Sørtveit, Equinor’s senior vice president for Exploration & Production West on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS).
“If more discoveries are made, it may be relevant to combine these to ensure good resource utilisation and the best possible economy.”
Discoveries close to existing infrastructure are important for keeping oil and gas output in Norway, the biggest hydrocarbon producer in Western Europe.
The Norwegian offshore energy authorities and the government are also urging the industry to explore in frontier regions such as the Barents Sea, where a large part of undiscovered resources are thought to be.
Last week, Equinor said that the start-up of the Johan Castberg field in the Barents Sea in the Arctic has been postponed to January or February 2025 from an initial launch date by the end of this year, due to bad weather conditions.
The field will produce for 30 years, and at its peak, Johan Castberg will be able to produce 220,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil, Equinor says.
Norway expects its oil liquids production to rise by 5.2% next year from 2024, also thanks to Johan Castberg.
Yet, further exploration efforts and new discoveries would be crucial to slowing the expected decline in Norway’s oil and gas production in the 2030s, the authorities of Western Europe’s largest oil and gas producer have said in recent years.
