BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 2. Equinor and its partners have announced a commercial oil discovery in the Snorre area of the North Sea, Trend reports via Equinor.
The well, drilled by the Deepsea Atlantic rig, has confirmed the presence of hydrocarbons. Preliminary estimates suggest recoverable volumes between 25 and 89 million barrels of oil equivalents (4–14.2 million standard cubic meters).
“The new discovery will be tied back quickly to existing subsea facilities and produced through the Snorre A platform. Near-field exploration is crucial for extending the life of fields already in operation. Since most of the infrastructure is already paid off, these are highly competitive barrels,” said Erik Gustav Kirkemo, Senior Vice President for the Southern Area in Exploration & Production Norway.
The Omega South discovery serves as a pilot for a new, faster, and more cost-efficient approach to developing subsea fields, demonstrating the future direction for the Norwegian continental shelf.
“What is new is that we are planning field development prior to the discovery. This allows new discoveries to come online in just two to three years. The exploration well was drilled through an existing foundation, which we plan to reuse along with parts of the well in the field development. This reduces costs and enables a faster start-up,” said Trond Bokn, Senior Vice President for Project Development at Equinor.
Equinor aims to maintain production levels in 2035 roughly equivalent to those in 2020 — about 1.2 million barrels of oil and gas per day from the Norwegian continental shelf. Approximately 70 percent of this production will come from new wells and developments, with the company planning 250 exploration wells, most located near existing fields, Kirkemo added.
The Snorre field, in production since 1992, has continued to receive new volumes. The Snorre Expansion Project, started in 2020, added 200 million barrels and extended the field’s lifetime beyond 2040. The new Omega South discovery can now be tied into this existing infrastructure, helping to reduce overall development costs.