Subsea infrastructure needed for Norwegian oil discovery

Equinor and its partners have made a commercial oil discovery in the Snorre area of the Norwegian sector of the North Sea.

It will be developed with subsea infrastructure set to be installed to tie the new oil accumulation back to a production platform on the Snorre field.

Equinor said it has discovered between 25M and 89M barrels with the Omega South Alpha well drilled by the Deepsea Atlantic rig. This was drilled in production licence 057, 1.6 km from Snorre in 380 m of water, in partnership with Petoro, Harbour Energy, Inpex Idemitsu and Vår Energi.

“The discovery will be tied back quickly to existing subsea facilities and produced through the Snorre A platform,” said Equinor senior vice president for exploration and production in the southern area of Norway, Erik Gustav Kirkemo.

“Near-field exploration is important for extending the lifetime of fields already in operation. Since most of the infrastructure has already been paid off, these are competitive barrels.”