Polish energy company ORLEN Group announced on Tuesday (7 November) that together with concession partners it has discovered additional gas reserves via its subsidiary PGNiG Upstream Norway near the Gina Krog field on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.
The discovered additional resources (gross) are estimated to be 0.8-2.6 million cubic metres of oil equivalents. By using the existing production infrastructure, it will be possible to start exploitation of the new resources later this year, ORLEN said in a press release.
“The discovery of new gas resources in the immediate vicinity of the Gina Krog field will not only allow ORLEN Group to increase natural gas production, but will also improve profitability indicators and help extend the field lifetime of the Gina Krog asset. We have a modern and well-developed production infrastructure at the site, so launching the exploitation of new resources will be possible with little investment and in a very short time,” said Daniel Obajtek, President of ORLEN’s Management Board. “The exploitation of these resources will not lead to additional CO2 emissions because the Gina Krog field is powered by hydroelectric power from shore from September 2023. This is an example of the successful implementation of our development strategy on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, which is the key foreign market for the ORLEN Group in terms of oil and gas production development.”
The discovery of new gas resources was made at the Dougal prospect, which is located 1.5 km from the Gina Krog field. The exploration well was drilled from the Gina Krog platform using a jack-up drilling rig. This will allow production to start up as early as Q4 2023, ORLEN said in the press release. Initially, the effect of the new well is increased oil production. Gas capacity on Gina Krog is currently fully utilised, and the gas from the new well will gradually be phased in when capacity becomes available over the next two years. The total estimated ultimate recovery from the Dougal well is between 0.8 and 2.6 million standard cubic metres of oil equivalent.
“By 2030, we plan to increase the amount of gas produced to 12 billion cubic metres per year, half of which will come from Norway. We want to achieve this target while reducing CO2 emissions per cubic metres of oil produced. Increasing the efficiency of the use of already existing infrastructure, such as in the case of Gina Krog, will contribute to this,” Mr Obajtek added.
The estimated remaining mean reserves in Gina Krog (gross), including the Dougal discovery are 13.0 million standard cubic metres of oil equivalents. To date, 17.0 million cubic metres of oil equivalents have already been extracted from the deposit.
In 2022, the company produced 3.5 billion cubic metres of natural gas from their Norwegian fields, which corresponded to more than 20 per cent of Poland’s gas demand for that year.
The operator of Gina Krog is Equinor Energy, in which it holds a 58.7 per cent share. KUFPEC Norway and PGNiG Upstream Norway hold 30 per cent and 11.3 per cent of shares, respectively.
