The licensees in the Tor Unit in the southern North Sea have secured consent to start up the Tor II facilities.

The Tor field was proven in 1970 and was in production from 1978 to 2015, when it was shut down.

In the summer of 2019, the licensees submitted a plan for development and operation (PDO) for a new development of the field, called Tor II. The plan was approved by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy in the autumn of 2019.

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate has now granted consent for start-up of the Tor II facilities from 1 November 2020.

“Tor is the first field on the Norwegian shelf with a complete redevelopment, receiving consent to start up after having been shut down. We are satisfied that the licensees have found solutions for even better utilisation of the resources in the Tor field,” says Arvid Østhus, the NPD’s assistant director of development and operations – North Sea.

Tor II comprises two new subsea templates to be installed on the Tor field and tied in to Ekofisk, about 13 kilometres away. Eight new production wells will be drilled. The recoverable reserves were estimated at 10 million standard cubic metres of oil equivalent (Sm3) in the PDO.

Operator ConocoPhillips plans start-up in the fourth quarter of 2020, in line with the description in the PDO.

“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,” says Østhus.

About the Tor Field and Tor Unit

The Tor field, discovered in 1970, is a unitized chalk field located in licenses PL018 and PL006 in blocks 2/4 and 2/5, about 13 kilometers northeast of the Ekofisk field. The original development comprised a single manned production platform, Tor 2/4 E, from which oil and associated gas was exported, via pipeline, to the Ekofisk Complex from 1978 until year-end 2015, when the platform lifetime expired.

Operator ConocoPhillips Skandinavia AS currently holds 30.66 percent ownership of the Tor Unit, while the remaining stake is held by Total E&P Norge (48.20 percent), Vår Energi (10.82 percent), Equinor Energy AS (6.64 percent) and Petoro AS (3.69 percent).  

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