(WO) – Equinor and partners Petoro and TotalEnergies have made an oil and gas discovery in exploration well 30/8-7 S Grimsnes, near the Oseberg field in the Norwegian North Sea. Preliminary estimates put recoverable volumes at 19 MMboe to 50 MMboe (3 million to 8 million Sm³). The Deepsea Bergen rig drilled the well in production license PL 190. It lies in 96 m (315 ft) of water, about 15 km (9 mi) southwest of the Oseberg Sør platform and 145 km (90 mi) west of Bergen.
The partners plan a fast, low-cost development that ties Grimsnes back to the Stjerne subsea installation and produces the volumes through Oseberg Sør. “This confirms that the area around the Oseberg field remains very attractive. We plan to quickly tie the discovery back to existing subsea facilities and produce the volumes through the Oseberg Sør platform,” said Frode Skarstein, Equinor’s SVP for exploration and production west. Grimsnes will likely be developed with two or three wells in a standard four-slot template. Equinor plans to buy subsea production equipment early next year, before the project is sanctioned. Because the equipment is standardized, it can be used elsewhere if the project doesn’t go ahead.
The discovery is part of Equinor’s push to develop smaller finds near existing infrastructure faster and more cheaply. The company aims to halve both the cost and the time from discovery to production through simpler processes, more standardization and repeatable solutions. “To bring these discoveries on stream, we must radically change how we plan and develop subsea projects,” said Gunnar Nakken, Equinor’s SVP for projects and subsea on the Norwegian continental shelf. He added, “We expect the partnership to make an investment decision for Grimsnes as early as next summer, with production within three years.”
Norway supplies about 20% of Europe’s oil and 30% of its gas, but production from its mature fields is declining. Through 2035, Equinor plans to drill 200 near-field exploration wells and deliver about 75 subsea developments. Its goal is to keep production on the Norwegian continental shelf at 1.3 million boed in 2035, with about 70% coming from new wells and developments.
Equinor operates PL 190 with a 50% interest. Petoro holds 40% and TotalEnergies 10%. The license was awarded in 1993 and includes the Tune field, which started producing in 2002 and lies about 20 km (12 mi) north of Grimsnes. Oseberg Sør came on stream in 2000. Its oil moves through the Oseberg Field Centre and the Oseberg Transport System to the Sture terminal.
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