Equinor, Aker BP pool technology efforts to unlock tight reservoir discoveries

Equinor and Aker BP launched a strategic collaboration to make more tight reservoir discoveries on the Norwegian Continental Shelf economic to develop and to raise oil and gas recovery. The operators plan to pursue those goals through shared technology development, standardization and cooperation across multiple projects.

Each company will contribute prospects, discoveries and projects from its portfolio and identify where joint technology work, standardization and knowledge sharing add the most value, including resource maturation and well stimulation solutions. The partners also aim to create steady, predictable activity levels that can support a competitive supply chain with the expertise and capacity to develop more tight reservoir discoveries. A joint steering structure and multidisciplinary working groups with staff from both companies will oversee the work, which is set to start immediately.

The Norwegian Offshore Directorate estimates about 2.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) of recovery potential in mapped tight reservoirs, comparable to the expected recoverable resources of the Johan Sverdrup field. Many of the roughly 90 discoveries still awaiting development approval sit in such reservoirs, where low permeability limits recovery with conventional methods and makes many projects too costly to develop.