OMV and Equinor are stepping up the pace to develop their 440 million barrel Wisting oil discovery in Norway's Barents Sea waters.
Austria's OMV is the current operator of Wisting, while Norwegian state-controlled giant Equinor is set to take over that role for the development phase under an agreement between the duo reached earlier this summer.
However, the Wisting licence partnership, which also includes Norwegian state entity Petoro and Idemitsu of Japan, is not waiting for that handover to be concluded before carrying out more development work, with the project recently passing its first hurdle when a favourable decision was taken on the so-called decision gate one.
