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A new oil and gas project in the North Sea has been greenlit by Norwegian oil major Equinor and its Fram partners, which plan to invest NOK 21 billion or USD$2 billion.
Equinor Energy owns 45 percent of the Fram Sør project, Vår Energi ASA holds 40 percent and INPEX Idemitsu Norge AS has 15 percent.
The plan for development and operations was submitted on Thursday to Norway’s Minister of Energy.
The Fram Sør project is a combined development of several discoveries that will export oil and gas via Troll C. The Troll field contains about 40 percent of total gas reserves on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS). The field consists of the main Troll East and Troll West structures. Troll is also one of the largest oil fields on the NCS.
Oil from the Fram field is transported through Troll Oil Pipeline II to Mongstad, and gas is exported to Kollsnes via the Troll A platform.
The Troll C platform. Source: Equinor
Recoverable volumes at Fram Sør are estimated at 116 million barrels of oil equivalent, 75 percent of which is oil and 25 percent is gas. Production is scheduled to start at the end of 2029, reads a company press release.
The field development is also technologically groundbreaking. Fram Sør will be the first project on the NCS to use all-electric “Christmas trees” that eliminate the need for hydraulic fluid supplied from the platform and improve monitoring capabilities of the subsea equipment. The technology also reduces the risk of environmental impact.
In the fall of 2019, Equinor and partners made a discovery of oil and gas in the Fram area of the North Sea. This discovery, called Echino South, supported the belief that more oil could be found, and contributed to nine discoveries made in the Troll-Fram area over a four-year period. In the spring of 2021, Equinor and partners made the Blasto discovery. Together with two smaller discoveries in previous years, Echino South and Blasto form the basis for Fram Sør.
Water depth in the area is about 350 meters and the reservoir is between 1,800 and 2,800 meters deep.
“We have done a thorough job maturing the new resources discovered in the Fram and Troll area in recent years,” said Kjetil Hove, Equinor's executive vice president for exploration & production Norway. “Fram Sør shows the importance of area solutions and close collaboration between partners and authorities in order to realize the resource values on a mature NCS. We have a large portfolio of projects that will phase in discoveries to our producing fields. Equinor expects to put more than 50 such projects on stream by 2035.”
