Norwegian oil and gas operator Aker BP has made a significant oil discovery that could add substantial resources to the Yggdrasil development area in Norway’s North Sea, where an ongoing multi-field project is expected to yield first oil in 2027.
Aker BP has successfully completed the Omega Alfa exploration campaign, which resulted in a major discovery with estimated recoverable volumes of 96–134 million barrels of oil equivalent, the company said on Thursday.
The new discovery would add new resources to the Yggdrasil development project, whose Plan for Development and Operation (PDO) was approved by Norwegian authorities in 2023. The project is progressing according to plan, with first oil expected in 2027, Aker BP said.
The proven resource base at Yggdrasil is approximately 700 million barrels of oil equivalent, with an ambition to grow this to more than 1 billion barrels through further exploration, the company added.
“The Omega Alfa discovery represents a significant building block in achieving this ambition,” Aker BP noted, as chief executive officer Karl Johnny Hersvik commented that Omega Alfa is one of the largest commercial discoveries in Norway in a decade.
The Omega Alfa discovery “marks a major step toward our ambition of producing more than one billion barrels from the Yggdrasil area,” Hersvik said.
Yggdrasil, located between Alvheim and Oseberg in the North Sea, is the biggest ongoing development on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, with Aker BP as operator and Equinor and Orlen Upstream Norway as license partners.
Near-field discoveries are crucial for operators offshore Norway to unlock additional resources that could be developed via existing infrastructure. This lowers development costs and allows resources to hit the market faster than stand-alone developments.
Companies operating offshore Norway are raising production of gas and oil, with the support of the Norwegian government, which continues to bet on the oil and gas industry and the massive revenues it raises for the country and its sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest.
Norway has also started to plan its 26th oil and gas licensing round in little-explored frontier areas as it looks to boost exploration and resources to stem an expected decline in production from the early 2030s.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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