Oil production from the second phase of Equinor’s giant Johan Sverdrup development remains in shutdown mode following an additional equipment failure, with lost output passing the million-barrel mark since the outage problems began last Wednesday.
Although onshore power supplies to the giant offshore field's second-phase infrastructure have been restored, oil production remains stalled for a sixth consecutive day.
The problem began when power outage occurred at the Haugsneset converter station, in south-western Norway, preventing the transmission of electricity to the phase two infrastructure via HVDC cables.
Equipment fault
An Equinor spokesperson confirmed that second phase start up had been delayed further and gave no indication of when production will resume from the second phase of the development, with its near 185,000 barrels per day contribution to total output on the field .
“After a failure in the power supply to Johan Sverdrup on 11 January, production on Process Platform No. 1 was quickly restarted and produces a stable 535,000 barrels per day,” the spokesperson told Upstream.
“The power supply to process platform No. 2 returned to operation on Friday [13 January] after a repair at the converter station at Haugsneset,” the spokeserson added.
“Start-up of production on Process platform no. 2 is now delayed due to an equipment fault that occurred when starting after a couple of days from a cold platform. Repair work has started.”
Johan Sverdrup is the third-largest oilfield offshore Norway and has estimated reserves of 2.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
The second phase of the giant offshore development came on stream in December.
According to block partner Aker BP, the second phase increases Johan Sverdrup’s plateau production capacity from 535,000 to 720,000 bpd gross.
An Equinor spokesperson told Upstream earlier: “We have some technical issues with one of the two power supply lines from shore to the Johan Sverdrup installations.
“This does not affect the phase one production, which is producing normally, but the phase one production is currently down.”
Equinor holds a 42.63% operating stake in the Johan Sverdrup licence, where it is partnered by Aker BP on 31.57%, Petoro on 17.36% and TotalEnergies on 8.44%.
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