Equinor Energy AS will further develop the gas infrastructure in the Troll West gas province in the North Sea to accelerate production from the reservoir and maintain the current gas export levels from Troll and Kollsnes up to 2030.
Stage 2 of the Troll Phase 3 project includes eight new wells from two new templates with subsea controls extended from existing templates. A new gas flowline will be laid as a tie-back to the Troll A platform, and the project will also perform modification work on Troll A. The first wells are scheduled to come on stream at end-2026.
The new infrastructure will accelerate production from the reservoir equivalent to about 55 bcm of gas. At its peak, the annual contribution from the new development will amount to around 7 bcm.
Stage 1 of gas production from Troll West began in 2021 and included eight wells and a new pipeline to the Troll A platform, as well as a new inlet module. The project helped extend plateau production by 5-7 years. Stage 2 will further extend plateau production by around 4 years and reduce production decline over the next 10-12 years.
Plateau production of Troll gas has increased with recent upgrades at the Kollsnes processing plant. Maximum production from Troll has increased to 129 million cu m/day (MMcmd) of gas from 121 MMcmd. Production from the new Troll wells is expected to reach about 20 MMcmd of gas.
Equinor let a front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract to OneSubsea with an option for detailed engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of subsea production systems, including umbilicals. The umbilicals will be manufactured in Moss and structures and manifolds will be assembled in Egersund.
Equinor also let a pipelaying contract for the 36-in. OD gas pipeline to Allseas and a drilling contract to Odfjell Drilling and the Deepsea Aberdeen drilling rig for the eight production wells. Drilling will start in late 2025 or early 2026 (OGJ Online, May 22, 2024).
Contracts will also be placed for the fabrication and installation of pipeline termination structures, umbilicals, connection pipes, etc., in addition to the installation of the subsea production system. Aker Solutions was previously awarded a FEED study for modifications to the Troll A platform.
Evaluations will be ongoing through the summer to select suppliers for implementation of EPC work on the platform. Contract awards are expected by the end of the summer.
Equinor is operator at Troll West (30.58%) with partners Petoro AS (56%), A/S Norske Shell 8.1%, Total E&P Norge AS (3.7%), and ConocoPhillips Skandinavia AS (1.6%).
Alex Procyk | Upstream Editor
Alex Procyk is Upstream Editor at Oil & Gas Journal. He has also served as a principal technical professional at Halliburton and as a completion engineer at ConocoPhillips. He holds a BS in chemistry (1987) from Kent State University and a PhD in chemistry (1992) from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).
