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More Arctic gas for Europe

The Aasta Hansteen and adjacent fields will supply gas to Europe through the new Polarled pipeline.

Statoil finds additional resources near the Aasta Hansteen project, few kilometers north of the Arctic Circle.

Location

The discovery at the Snefrid Nord well is estimated to hold between 31-57 million barrels of oil eqivalents, Statoil informs in a press release. That will increase the accumulated volume of the nearby Aasta Hansteen project with 15 percent.

The additional volumes of the Aasta Hansteen are modest. However, they must still be considered as highly important considering the infrastructure which is under development in the area. The 480 km long Polarled pipeline will connect the Aasta Hansteen with a gas processing plant at Nyhamna on the west coast of Norway. That pipeline could easily transport additional gas, all of it destined to consumers in Europe.

“The Snefrid Nord discovery makes the Aasta Hansteen development project more robust and prolongs the Aasta Hansteen production plateau. It will utilise both the Aasta Hansteen and the Polarled gas pipeline capacity,” says Torolf Christensen, Statoil vice president for the Aasta Hansteen project says.

The drilling of the well was conducted with the Transocean Spitsbergen rig. The drilling installation will now move on to the neighboring Roald Rygg prospect, the company informs.

The Aasta Hansteen field was found in 1997 and is to come into production in 2017. The resources are located far from the coast and at major depths. The resources will be extracted with a Spar platform, the first of its kind on the Norwegian shelf.

The Aasta Hansteen field will be developed with a Spar platform and the gas will be sent through the 480 km long new Polarled pipeline.