Oil major ConocoPhillips has secured consent from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) to start up the Tor II field facilities located in the North Sea offshore Norway.
The Tor II oil and gas project encompasses the re-development of the Tor field, which is located in 80m-deep waters in the Greater Ekofisk Area in the Norwegian North Sea.
It is jointly owned by Total E&P Norge (48.20%), ConocoPhillips Skandinavia (30.66%, operator), Var Energi (10.82%), Equinor Energy (6.64%) and Petoro (3.69%).
In mid-2019, ConocoPhillips and partners submitted a plan for development and operation (PDO) for the Tor II development.
NPD North Sea development and operations assistant director Arvid Østhus said: “Tor is the first field on the Norwegian shelf with a complete redevelopment, receiving consent to start up after having been shut down.”
NPD has now granted permission for start-up of the Tor II facilities from November this year.
The project plan comprises two new subsea templates with eight production wells, planned to be connected to the Ekofisk Complex.
ConocoPhillips plans Tor II oil and gas field start-up in Q4-2020.
Østhus added: “Tor II shows that shut down fields can create significant values if they are redeveloped.
“We have produced oil and gas on the NCS for nearly 50 years, and the industry has undergone enormous development through this period. That’s why it’s so great that fields once shut down because they were not profitable can become profitable again today.”
In December last year, ConocoPhillips received consent from the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) for production drilling on the Tor field (Tor II) offshore Norway using the West Linus mobile facility.
