Output at Norway’s Johan Sverdrup oilfield will rise to 433,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) in April from around 350,000 bbl/d at the end of last year, according to a schedule seen by Reuters which operator Equinor shared with oil traders.
The first phase of the Sverdrup field development came on stream last October and has an estimated plateau capacity of 440,000 bbl/d, which Equinor has said it will reach “during summer 2020”.
Equinor was not immediately available to comment on the loading program for Sverdrup, which has quickly become western Europe’s largest producing oilfield.
The company has previously said it needed to drill two new production wells to reach the first-phase plateau after starting output from eight pre-drilled wells last year.
Drilling of the first of these two wells started in January, Sverdrup field partner Lundin Petroleum has said.
Alex Schneiter, Lundin’s chief executive, told an energy conference last week that its ramp-up was going “extremely well”.
“We are targeting plateau during summer 2020, but I would not be surprised if we could do better than that,” he added.
Executives of Aker BP, another partner, told Reuters last month that Equinor was working to accelerate the phase-one ramp-up.
Other partners in the 2.7 billion barrel North Sea field are French Total and Norway’s Petoro.
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