Equinor, Aker BP og Vår Energi: Oljetopper varsler nytt samarbeid

Equinor, Aker BP, and Vår Energi announced plans for increased collaboration at the oil and energy exhibition ONS in Stavanger. The companies aim to combine expertise, data, technology, and exploration capabilities to investigate selected opportunities with significant potential, according to a statement. In recent years, numerous discoveries have been made near existing infrastructure on the seabed, but the three major oil companies believe that larger discoveries are also needed to enable larger, independent developments.

All three companies have high ambitions for self-production in the future: the oil and gas industry's task is to curb the expected decline in production from the Norwegian seabed, said the Directorate of Petroleum in the previous week. The Directorate has updated its production scenarios for the Norwegian seabed until 2050. In the base case, production is expected to be more than halved by 2050.

In a high scenario, production could be 65% of today's level in 2050. In a low scenario, it could fall to around 5% of today's level in 2050, according to the Directorate. Aker BP and Equinor held press conferences on Monday during ONS, hoping to curb production declines as much as possible. Aker BP CEO Karl Johnny Hersvik said on Monday morning that for the Norwegian seabed, you need a 10- or even 15-year perspective.

Norwegian oil and gas companies like Aker BP and Equinor plan to keep production going well beyond the 2030s. They often face criticism from parties and activists who want a different direction and are worried about emissions. The development of global fossil fuel exploration is very uncertain, according to estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA) last year: the Directorate of Petroleum stated in 2024 that their various scenarios for production on the Norwegian seabed by 2050 were consistent with the Paris Agreement's climate goals, and showed that a public review was needed. However, that reference has since been removed from the year's resource report.