The Norwegian petroleum and energy ministry has granted state-controlled Equinor the highest ever gas production permit for the Troll field in the 2023-24 gas year.
Output from the field will be capped at 40.47bn m³ on 1 October 2023–30 September 2024, the ministry told Argus today.
This is up on the 38.5bn m³ quota for the 2022-23 gas year, which was itself the highest ever.
And the production permit for the Oseberg area — including Oseberg proper and the smaller Oseberg Sor and Oseberg Ost fields — will in 2023-24 remain unchanged from this gas year at 7bn m³, the ministry said.
But the raised production permit for Troll might not allow for a large increase in production, as production exceeded the quota in the past two gas years.
The flexible production permits at both fields allow some over or underproduction in each gas year, with the difference to the permit being rolled forward to future year quotas.
Troll production in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 gas years exceeded the quota, by 862mn m³ and 2.5bn m³, respectively (see graph).
Troll production for this gas year could be roughly in line with the production quota of 38.5bn m³. Production in the first nine months of the current gas year, the latest data available, totalled 30.19bn m³, leaving 8.31bn m³ to be produced in July-September to meet the quota.
The field has been off line for maintenance since 26 August. Production is scheduled to restart on 7 September, but ongoing restrictions will limit production in the remainder of September to a maximum of 2.72bn m³. And taking into account maintenance, production in August could not have exceeded 2.5bn m³. If production last month and this month meets maximum capacity, the field would meet its quota if production in July totalled 3.09bn m³. July production has reached or exceeded this multiple times in recent years, including in 2022 and 2020.
Production at the Oseberg area totalled 4.27bn m³ in the first nine months of this gas year. Even if production held at capacity in July-September the field would undershoot its permit for the gas year of 7bn m³. But the area produced well above its permit in 2020-21, exceeding it by 3.63bn m³. Equinor may have had to reduce production so far this gas year to balance out this earlier overproduction.
