Offshore staff
STAVANGER, Norway — Equinor and its partners in the giant Troll Field in the Norwegian North Sea will invest just over NOK12 billion (US$1.13 billion) in developing infrastructure serving the Troll West gas province.
The aim is to speed up production from the reservoir to sustain current gas export levels from Troll to the Kollsnes processing plant in western Norway through to 2030. It will allow Troll and Kollsnes to help safeguard supplies of gas to customers in Europe.
Troll’s gas accounts for about 10% of Europe’s demands, according to Kjetil Hove, executive vice president for Exploration and Production Norway.
Stage 2 of the Troll Phase 3 project calls for drilling of eight new wells from two new templates producing 20 MMcf/d, with subsea controls extended from existing templates.
A new gas flowline will be laid between the facilities and the Troll A platform, which will also undergo modifications to receive the additional production. Equinor expects to bring the first wells online at the end of 2026.
“We’ve chosen to use solid, familiar suppliers, most of which already have framework agreements with us,” said Geir Tungesvik, executive vice president of Projects, Drilling & Procurement. “It’s a clear advantage that several of them have experience from the previous stage of the Troll Phase 3 development.”
The new infrastructure should add about 55 Bcm to overall gas production from the field, peaking at 7 Bcm/year.
The first stage of gas production from Troll West gas province, which began in 2021, included eight wells and a new pipeline to Troll A platform, along with a new inlet module. This work is helping to prolong plateau production by up to seven years.
Stage 2 will further extend that plateau by about four years while also slowing the production decline over the next 10 to 12 years.
Recent upgrades at Kollsnes have increased throughput from Norwegian fields from 121 MMcf/d to 129 MMcf/d.
05.24.2024
