The huge Johan Sverdrup oilfield in Norway's North Sea is already producing 350,000 barrels of oil per day, two months after coming on stream, a senior executive at Equinor, the operator of the giant oilfield, told Reuters on Tuesday.
Production at Johan Sverdrup has increased to 350,000 bpd, Arne Sigve Nylund, Executive Vice President, Development & Production Norway, told Reuters.
Three weeks after the oilfield was brought online on October 5, oil production totaled 200,000 bpd, and the field was getting ready to ship its first Sverdrup oil cargo to Asian customers.
With the rise in production volumes to 350,000 bpd, Johan Sverdrup is now the largest producing oilfield in western Europe, pumping more than some of the most popular oilfields in the North Sea, including Troll and Ekofisk offshore Norway and Buzzard in the UK, Reuters notes.
With expected resources of 2.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent, Johan Sverdrup is one of the largest discoveries on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) ever made and one of the largest industrial projects in Norway for the next fifty years, according to Equinor.
All eight pre-drilled wells were expected to be put in production by the end of November, giving a production capacity well above 300,000 bpd, Equinor said at the end of October.
Johan Sverdrup is expected to reach plateau production in the summer of 2020.
Daily production during the first phase of the Johan Sverdrup development is estimated at 440,000 bpd, while peak production with the second development phase is expected to reach 660,000 bpd. At peak production, Johan Sverdrup will account for around a third of Norway's crude oil production.
Johan Sverdrup will boost Norwegian oil production through the mid-2020s, but the country would need more and larger oil discoveries soon in order to stave off another drop after the mid-2020s.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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