Equinor ASA has been awarded 35 new production licenses in the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) following the APA 2025 licensing round, expanding its acreage footprint across the North Sea, Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea. The new licenses include stakes in six license areas in the North Sea, 15 in the Norwegian Sea and 14 in the Barents Sea, bringing Equinor’s total operated portfolio on the NCS to 114 licenses. These awards are expected to underpin an incremental 30,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d) by 2030, reinforcing the company’s strategic objective to sustain production levels above 2 million boe/d. Several of the new licenses sit in proximity to existing infrastructure platforms such as Gullfaks and Snøhvit, enabling cost-efficient tie-backs and reducing breakeven thresholds to below $50 per barrel of oil equivalent.

A senior Equinor executive told Reuters the company aims to finalize the technical field development plan for Wisting—the world’s northernmost undeveloped oil discovery—by year-end, following a 35% reduction in estimated capital expenditure. The cost savings, achieved through optimized drilling programs and modularized topside design, have brought the project’s capex down from $5.5 billion to approximately $3.6 billion. Equinor plans to drill the first production well in 2027, targeting peak output of 50,000 boe/d by 2030. The undersea field, located 300 kilometers off northern Norway, will utilize existing subsea templates and tie-in to the Goliat FPSO, cutting development lead time by an estimated 18 months compared with the original schedule.