New oil and gas find by North Sea Troll field

Norway's Equinor and its partners DNO, Wellesley Petroleum and Petoro have made an oil and gas discovery on the Røver Sør prospect close to the Troll field in the North Sea.

The discovery well and a follow-on appraisal sidetrack encountered hydrocarbons in three Jurassic Brent Group sandstone reservoirs (Ness, Etive and Oseberg formations). According to preliminary estimates the size of the discovery is between 17 and 47 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent, of which the majority is oil.

All the partners consider the discovery to be commercial. Together with a string of recent discoveries in the area, Røver Sør may be tied back to the Equinor-operated Troll field about 10 kilometers to the east. Røver Sør may be tied back to the Equinor-operated Troll field about 10 kilometers to the east.

“Discoveries close to existing infrastructure are important to maintain oil and gas production from the Norwegian continental shelf. They need smaller volumes to be profitable and can be put on stream quickly with low carbon emissions. As this discovery is close to the Troll field and other discoveries we have made in the area, we can already now state that it will be commercial,” said Geir Sørtveit, Equinor’s senior vice president for exploration and production west operations.

There is uncertainty as to the size of the discoveries, but an average of the various estimates gives a total volume of around 350 million barrels of oil equivalent, corresponding to a medium-sized Norwegian oil or gas field, and the size of the Aasta Hansteen field in the Norwegian sea.

“Equinor has started field development projects to coordinate the development of these discoveries by utilising existing infrastructure in collaboration with our partners. This discovery will be part of this work,” said Sørtveit.

The name of the next exploration well in this area is Heisenberg. The results of this well are to be ready in March.

Equinor is operator of the production licence. The partners are DNO, Wellesley Petroleum and Petoro.

Røver Sør is DNO’s fourth consecutive exploration success in the Troll-Gjøa area following the 2021 Røver Nord discovery within the same license and also the 2022 discoveries of Kveikje in PL293B (DNO 29 percent) and Ofelia in PL929 (DNO 10 percent).