Statoil and its partners began oil and gas production from their Gina Krog field in the evening of June 30, the Norwegian state controlled producer said July 3. They had spent NKr 31bn ($3.7bn), which was "in line with the cost estimate in the plan for development and operation,” Statoil said.

Gina Krog is a global project but it used Norwegian firms to supply more than half of the equipment packages. All the drilling and well services are performed by Norwegian suppliers.

The Gina Krog platform (impression below) is tied in to Sleipner A and uses both processing capacity on the platform and existing pipelines for sending the gas to the market in Europe, so extracting more value from them; and from Karsto.

(Credit: Statoil)

Gina Krog was initially a small-size gas discovery made in 1974, known as Dagny. However in 2007 and 2008 oil was struck. “We believe it is possible to maintain high levels of activity on the Norwegian Continental Shelf up to, and beyond 2030.  We have a very good infrastructure which we will leverage to add value for Statoil and society for a long time to come,” Statoil said.

Statoil is the operator, with 58.7% stake. Its partners are French Total (15%), Kuwaiti state Kufpec (15%), Polish PGNiG (8%) and Aker BP (3.3%).

Norwegian upstream regulator NPD said that Gina Krog recoverable reserves are 16.8mn m³ (106mn bbls) of oil, 11.8bn m³ gas and 3.2mn mt of NGL. PGNiG said the field's gross production capacity is 10,000 m³ /d oil, and 9mn m^{3 /}d gas (0.32bn m³/yr); start-up was originally expected early in 2017.

William Powell