Technical Fault Forces Huge Norwegian Oilfield Offline

Oil production at Norway’s huge Johan Sverdrup 1 oilfield was halted on Monday due to a technical fault and reduced power supply, the operator of the field, Norwegian energy major Equinor, said.

Production at the field, which can pump up to 535,000 barrels per day (bpd), was stopped after a technical fault in a cooling system occurred, a spokesperson for Equinor told Reuters on Monday.

The second phase of the oilfield, Johan Sverdrup 2, operates normally, the spokesperson added.

According to a filing with the Nordic power exchange Nordpool, an unplanned failure at a process plant has reduced electricity supply to a unit on the Johan Sverdrup platform. The estimated shutdown of the power supply is two to three days. The restart is tentatively scheduled for mid-day on Wednesday, February 8, according to the filing.

The Johan Sverdrup oilfield, Western Europe’s biggest oilfield which came online in 2019, produces 535,000 bpd of crude oil, and with Johan Sverdrup 2, the giant oilfield will produce 720,000 bpd at plateau.

Equinor started production from Johan Sverdrup 2 in the middle of December.

Johan Sverdrup alone can meet 6-7% of the daily oil demand in Europe. Recoverable volumes in the Johan Sverdrup field total 2.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent, Equinor says.                     

“Johan Sverdrup accounts for large and important energy deliveries, and in the current market situation, most of the volumes will go to Europe,” Geir Tungesvik, Equinor's executive vice president for Projects, Drilling & Procurement, said in December.

The outage at Western Europe’s biggest oilfield comes a day after the EU banned seaborne imports of refined petroleum products from Russia and set a price cap on diesel at $100 per barrel. The embargo has been combined with the price cap for deliveries to third countries, agreed upon with the G7 in the same way that the EU and the G7 coordinated the price cap on Russian crude last year.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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