– Did you know that we have never explored for gas in the Barents Sea? All exploration, going back to the 1980s, targeted oil prospects, says Dag Mustad, Asset Manager at Aker BP.
Mustad is one of our keynote speakers at the NCS Exploration – Recent Discoveries conference in Oslo in May. He will give the talk Barents Sea increased gas export – what does it take?
Currently, gas export from the Barents Sea is constrained by the capacity of the Melkøya LNG plant and gas produced at Snøhvit is expected to fill the plant until 2040.
The consequences are evident:
- For one thing, gas discoveries, and associated gas in oil discoveries/fields, in the Barents Sea are currently considered stranded resources that the industry cannot develop/produce.
- Secondly, the capacity constraints discourage gas exploration.
- Third, the fact that Norway at the moment only can develop new oil resources, and not gas, in the Barents Sea, is far from optimal from a resource management and social economics perspective.
According to the Norwegian Offshore Directorate, the gas exploration potential in the Barents Sea is considerable, estimated to account for half of the undiscovered gas resources on the NCS.
The obvious solution to this challenge is to increase the export capacity, and while this has been discussed for some years, no concrete actions have been taken.
That is, until recently.
– Last year, the industry was challenged by the Minister of Energy Terje Aasland to start exploring for gas, while also working towards maturing a solution for increased export capacity. In my talk, I will share some of the ways the industry has answered his call, Mustad informs.
It’s a chicken and egg situation. While increased gas export capacity is highly needed to further develop our resources in the Barents Sea, we must simultaneously prove more gas before any investments will be made.
The solution might simply be to work out the challenges in parallel.
– For the first time ever, we will start exploring for gas in the Barents Sea.
Mustad says NCS operators have now established a tri-lateral cooperation to start the search for more gas resources, thus potentially enabling a future capacity increase.
The three companies are Equinor, Vår Energi, and Aker BP. During the last APA round, the companies acquired new licenses in the Barents Sea, and collectively now sit on four licenses with gas-only prospectivity.
Mustad anticipates that drilling on these licenses will commence in 2025 or 2026. Last Autumn, Vår Energi reported that they, together with Equinor, had secured a drilling rig for the Barents Sea drilling until 2026, but with an option for three additional years.
The three companies are also in dialogue with Gassco to establish plans and premises to mature new infrastructure.
In 2023, Gassco published a report that reviewed various options for increasing gas export capacity in the Barents Sea. The conclusion was that a pipeline, possibly in parallel with a minor increase in capacity at Melkøya, was the best solution for the society and future area development.
We are eager to hear Dag Mustad’s keynote talk on the future of gas in the Barents Sea. The program and registration form can be found on the conference website. The place is Oslo (Fornebu), and the dates are May 7. – 8. 2024.