Shell and its partners have started up two subsea compressors to boost the recovery rate at the Ormen Lange natural gas field in the Norwegian Sea, the UK-based supermajor, which operates the field, said on Friday. 

Shell expects the compression stations to raise the gas recovery rate to 85% from the current 75%. 

The two new compressor stations are installed on the seabed 120 kilometers (75 miles) from shore and are directly connected to the processing plant at Nyhamna. 

The increased recovery rate will allow the extraction of 30–50 billion cubic meters more gas from Ormen Lange, Shell said.  

Ormen Lange’s gas, processed at Nyhamna on the west coast of Norway, is being exported to the UK and the EU.

Norway has been boosting its gas production since 2022 when it overtook Russia as Europe’s top gas supplier. Not a member of the EU, but a NATO founding member and key EU and UK ally, Norway looks to continue providing the gas Europe needs. 

So companies operating offshore Norway are raising production of gas and oil, with the support of the Norwegian government, which continues to bet on the oil and gas industry and the massive revenues it raises for the country and its sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest. 

This month alone, independent Norwegian oil and producer Var Energi announced the startup of its Balder X project in Norway’s North Sea, which will boost output from the Balder field by about 80,000 barrels of oil  equivalent per day (boepd). In addition, Equinor said that the Johan Castberg oilfield in the Barents Sea had reached full capacity of 220,000 barrels per day (bpd), just three months after the field in Norway’s Arctic waters came on stream. 

Norway expects its oil liquids production to rise by 5.2% in 2025 from 2024, also thanks to the start-up of Johan Castberg.  

Yet, further exploration efforts and new discoveries would be crucial to slowing the expected decline in Norway’s oil and gas production in the 2030s, the Norwegian authorities have said.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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