Norwegian state-controlled Equinor requested a gas production quota for the Troll field for October 2025-September 2026, that would leave no spare capacity to produce any gas deferred from previous years, according to documents seen by Argus.
The flexible Troll field's gas production is limited by an annual quota, intended to ensure careful reservoir management. If firms do not produce all the gas allowed under the quota, they can carry some volumes over into the following gas years.
But Equinor explains in the redacted permit application letter from January seen by Argus that it "will not be possible to produce any underlift volumes" from Troll in 2025-26 after taking into account expected capacity at Troll and the Kollsnes processing plant. This bank of gas from underproduction in previous years was 8.24bn m³ as of the start of October 2024, distributed among the licence holders.
The permit applications for 2024-25 and 2025-26 suggest that Equinor wants to produce as much from the field as technical limitations allow, leaving no room to sell any gas held over from previous years. And Troll's production capacity rather than Kollsnes' processing capacity might be the biggest limiting factor.
Equinor's 2025-26 permit application also refers to shifting focus from oil well technology to gas recovery optimisation and modelling, further signalling potential for strong gas production.
Troll's 2024-25 gas production quota was not made public, but the permit request had also excluded scope to sell any gas held back in previous gas years.
Troll output totalled 41.9bn m³ in October 2024-June 2025, or 117.1mn m³/d. If that daily production rate continued into July-September, production would reach 43.3bn m³ in the 2024-25 gas year, exceeding the 2023-24 permit of 42.2bn m³ — the highest ever for the field at the time (see permits table). That said, heavy September maintenance is likely to push 2024-25 production below this figure.
Troll's technical capacity is listed at 124.2mn-131.5mn m³/d in the 2025-26 gas year, according to offshore grid operator Gassco's maintenance schedule — equivalent to 45.3bn-48bn m³/yr. But this does not factor in lower availability over maintenance.
The application also considers available capacity at Kollsnes, which processes gas from Troll alongside the smaller Kvitebjorn, Visund and Fram fields.
Kollsnes' nameplate capacity is 158mn m³/d. And production from the four fields combined was 142.5mn m³/d in October 2024-June 2025, below the plant's capacity but before factoring in Kollsnes maintenance.
Output from Visund is poised to increase in the 2025-26 gas year after the energy ministry granted Equinor a higher permit for the field, which in turn may reduce spare capacity at Kollsnes. But even using Equinor's high-scenario projection for 14.2mn m³/d of Visund production in 2025-26, and unchanged output from the other three fields, this would add up to daily deliveries of 143mn m³/d to Kollsnes. This is comfortably within the plant's processing capacity.
| Troll permits | bn m³ |
| Gas year | Permit |
| 2025-26 | na |
| 2024-25 | na |
| 2023-24 | 42.2 |
| 2022-23 | 38.5 |
| 2021-22 | 37.0 |
| 2020-21 | 36.0 |
| 2019-20 | 36.0 |
| 2018-19 | 38.0 |
| — Production permits | |
