Equinor makes commercial oil discovery in North Sea Snorre area

Equinor and its partners plan a fast-track subsea tieback for a new oil discovery in the Snorre area of the Norwegian North Sea. 

The semisub Deepsea Atlantic drilled exploration well 34/4-19 S in 381 m of water on the Omega South Alpha prospect in production license 057, finding oil in sandstone layers in Mid-Jurassic Brent Group reservoir rocks.

Initial analysis suggests a commercial and recoverable resource ranging from 25 MMboe to 89 MMboe. This will be connected to existing subsea facilities about 5 km away and produced through the Snorre A platform. 

The well location is 1.6 km east of the Snorre Field.

“What is new is that we are now planning the field development prior to discovery. This makes it possible to bring new discoveries into production in just two to three years. The exploration well was drilled through a foundation. The partnership plans to reuse both this foundation and parts of the exploration well in the field development, which reduces costs and enables a faster startup.”

—Trond Bokn, senior vice president (SVP) for project development, Equinor

Equinor added that this new pre-planning approach, ahead of exploration drilling, could serve as a blueprint for many more of its future tie-in projects close to producing fields.

The company has prioritized continued exploration of its Norwegian licenses to offset declining production from existing fields and to accelerate tieback developments of new near-field discoveries.

“Equinor’s ambition is to maintain approximately the same production level in 2035 as in 2020. This corresponds to around 1.2 MMboe/d of oil and gas from the Norwegian Continental Shelf. About 70% of this will come from new wells and developments, and we plan to drill 250 exploration wells, most of them near existing fields.”

—Erik Gustav Kirkemo, SVP for the Southern Area in Exploration & Production Norway, Equinor

The Snorre Field, where production started in 1992, last underwent further development with the 200-MMbbl Snorre Expansion Project, which came onstream in 2020 and should prolong the field’s lifespan beyond 2040.

Omega South discovery could be tied into the associated subsea infrastructure.

The partnership comprises Equinor Energy (operator, 31%), Petoro (30%), Harbour Energy Norge (24.5%), INPEX Idemitsu Norge (9.6%) and Vår Energi (4.9%).