Equinor has made an oil discovery in a wildcat well in a prospect close to the giant Johan Castberg field in the Barents Sea, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate said on Wednesday.

Equinor, as the operator, and its partners in the Polynya Tubåen prospect, Var Energi and Petoro, estimate to have found between 14 and 24 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent, and are now considering whether they could tie the discovery back to the Johan Castberg field.

In 2025, Equinor started up the Johan Castberg project, which last summer hit full capacity of 220,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil production.

Johan Castberg will produce crude for 30 years, boost Norway’s oil exports, and bolster the role of Western Europe’s biggest oil and gas producer as a reliable and long-term supplier of energy, Equinor said.

Despite the best exploration results in four years in 2025, Norway will need even more exploration and discoveries, as well as investment in new oil and gas projects, to reverse an expected decline in output from the late 2020s, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate, the industry regulator, said earlier this year.

Equinor plans to drill 20 to 30 exploration wells every year as it aims to sustain current production levels all the way through 2035, the company said in January when it was awarded 35 new production licenses on the Norwegian continental shelf in Norway’s tender for mature exploration areas.

A total of 80% of the exploration will be near existing infrastructure, while 20% will explore new concepts and lesser-known areas, the Norwegian energy major said.

“There is still a lot of energy left on the NCS, but we need new discoveries to curb the expected production decline,” commented Jez Averty, Equinor’s senior vice president for subsurface, the Norwegian continental shelf.

“Phasing in oil and gas from new discoveries to existing infrastructure is a core task going forward,” Averty added.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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