The giant Johan Sverdrup North Sea oil field is set to be delayed by up to a year after the project’s partners postponed a decision on how to develop its resources.
The firms behind the field – including Statoil, Det norske, Lundin Petroleum, and Maersk Oil – had been due to announce this month what concept had been picked to develop the find, which is thought to contain up to 2.8billion barrels of oil equivalent.
But the concept decision has now been postponed until early 2014, with production start-up not expected to begin until the end of 2019.
“We need to make the final clarifications and give the individual companies the opportunity to make a proper consideration,” said Øivind Reinertsen, Statoil’s senior vice president for the project.
“At the same time, the partners agree that we should award the FEED contract at soon as possible in order to keep momentum.”
Initial investment in the project is set to cost the partners in the field up to £13billion, Det norske revealed, although that number could yet rise.
The project’s partners said they also hope to award a front end engineering and design contract for the field around the same time as the concept announcement, in order to keep work progressing on the development.
“The plan is to submit a plan for development and operations that can be approved by the Norwegian Parliament in the first half 2015, with first production in late 2019,” Det norske said in a statement.
That would put the approval timescale for the project within the parliament’s spring session for 2015.
The Sverdrup field will, once fully operational, produce up to 200,000 barrels of oil per day, along with five million standard cubic metres per day during its early phase.
The field, around 140km west of Stavanger, is the fourth largest in the Norwegian North Sea and one of the biggest discoveries in recent years.