Norway's Equinor has made a natural gas and condensate discovery in the Norwegian Sea, close to a field currently under development, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate said on Tuesday.
Equinor and its partners in a production license in the Haltenbanken Vest Unit in the Norwegian Sea proved gas and condensate, a type of very light oil, in a development well drilled as part of the previously discovered Lavrans field.
Preliminary estimates place the size of the discovery in the range of 2-4 million standard cubic meters of recoverable oil equivalent, the Norwegian authority said.
Equinor and its partners in the license will now consider if the discovery could be tied back to infrastructure being developed for Lavrans, which is a part of the Kristin field.
Equinor is looking to boost gas production offshore Norway to export more of the commodity to Europe after Russian flows to the continent have significantly dropped following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
In early July, the Norwegian energy major started gas production from the first Lavrans well in the Kristin South area. The gas will be exported through the pipeline system to the European market, while the oil will be transported to the market by ship via the Ã…sgard C storage vessel, Equinor said.
As part of the first phase of the Kristin South project, four additional wells are planned to be drilled, three at the Lavrans field and one in the Q-segment at the Kristin field.
Equinor was one of the 21 companies that have submitted bids in Norway's latest license round for new acreage in the best-explored areas on the shelf.
The applications confirm considerable interest in exploration near existing fields and infrastructure, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate said last week.
Further exploration efforts and new discoveries would be crucial to slowing the expected decline in Norway's oil and gas production in the 2030s, Norway's Energy Minister Terje Aasland said, adding that additional resources from Norway would be an important contributor to Europe's energy security.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More