Norway's Sverdrup Oilfield Back to Two-Thirds Capacity After Outage
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Equinor has resumed production at the Johan Sverdrup oilfield in the North Sea, reaching two-thirds of its capacity by mid-morning on Tuesday following a power outage, as reported by Reuters. Output at western Europe's largest oilfield was halted on Monday due to an onshore power outage that disrupted electricity supply to the platforms, briefly boosting global oil prices.
Repair work on the converter station is ongoing, and Equinor is working to resume full output, Equinor's spokesperson said. Oil prices slipped on Tuesday following news of the Norwegian restart.
The power outage was caused by overheating in an electrical converter station at Kaarstoe in south-west Norway, the spokesperson added. Equinor does not believe the incident was deliberate, the spokesperson said in response to a question from Reuters.
Last month, Equinor reported that the field was producing at peak capacity of around 755,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed), although this was expected to gradually decline from early next year. Equinor is the operator and owns 42.63% of the Sverdrup licence while Aker BP holds 31.57%, Norwegian state-owned oil firm Petoro 17.36%, and France's TotalEnergies the remaining 8.44%.