Fire Shuts Equinor’s Visund Platform in Norwegian North Sea

Equinor suspended operations at its Visund oil and gas platform in the Norwegian North Sea on Wednesday following a fire in an electrical switchboard room, halting the field's gas export capacity for the entire day starting Thursday. The fire was reported shortly before 11 a.m. local time, as confirmed by NRK. Equinor spokesperson Ellen Maria Skjelsbæk stated that initial reports indicated smoke, which later turned into flames within the switchboard room that houses the power control and distribution panels.

Fortunately, the flames have been extinguished, and no personnel were injured. In response to the incident, Equinor relocated approximately 70 to 80 of the 128 workers on board to other nearby facilities. Repairs are required, but the timeline for resuming production remains uncertain.

Norwegian gas system operator Gassco reduced Visund's available capacity to 2.5 million cubic meters per day as of 1253 CET on Wednesday, and to zero for the gas day on Thursday. The notice also specifies that the duration of the outage is uncertain. Gassco is currently managing three other unplanned outages in Norway. The Norwegian gas market had a total export nomination of 324.8 million cubic meters for Wednesday's gas day.

Visund, located in the Tampen area northeast of the Gullfaks field, has been in operation since 1999 and primarily produces gas. In 2025, the platform exported a total of 5.1 billion cubic meters of gas. The gas is transported via the Kvitebjørn pipeline to the Kollsnes processing plant, and then distributed to European markets.

Equinor shares ownership of the Visund field with Petoro (30%), ConocoPhillips (9.1%), and Repsol (7.7%). On the global front, European gas prices experienced a 2% decline on Wednesday as market participants awaited the next move from Washington on Iran-related matters. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has cautioned that a global gas shortage may persist well into 2027.