Norway's Var Energi Partners with Halliburton to Improve Drilling in NCS

Norway’s Var Energi ASA has entered into a long-term partnership with oilfield service company Halliburton for drilling services, targeting to improve drilling and well performance, according to a recent news release.

The partnership contract lasts for five years and has options to be extended for an additional four years. The partnership covers drilling services related to exploration and production for Var Energi across the entire Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS), Var Energi said in the news release.

Var Energi’s activities span the entire Norwegian Continental Shelf with a diversified portfolio of 158 licenses and 39 producing fields. Drilling activities are focused around four strategic hubs in the Balder/Grane area, the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea, and the Barents Sea, according to the company.

“Halliburton has extensive experience and proven capabilities from operations in Norway over many years”, Halliburton Chairman, President, and CEO Jeff Miller said in the release. “Halliburton’s value proposition – to collaborate and engineer solutions to maximize asset values for our customers – fits perfectly with Var Energi’s ambitious growth plans.”

“We are on track to deliver on our end-2025 production target, an increase of more than 50% from today’s level”, Ingrid Solvberg, Var Energi Executive Vice-President for Technology, Drilling, and Subsurface, said. “Combined with our proven best-in-class exploration capabilities, teaming up with Halliburton will be a key enabler in meeting our ambitious long-term growth targets.”

Var Energi CEO Torger Rød said that the company is committed to building “strong, long-term strategic partnerships in all key business areas”. “Halliburton represents world-class technical expertise and capabilities combined with extensive experience in areas of high strategic importance to our activities”, he added.

Recent Results

Var Energi recently reported $2.094 billion in total income for the first quarter of 2023, a decline of 12 percent from the last quarter. The company’s cash flow from operations was $1.358 billion, up from $445 million in the previous quarter. It reported production of 214,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day for the quarter.

In April 2023, Var Energi started GoliatVind, a pilot project for the development of floating offshore wind at the Goliat platform, together with Odfjell Oceanwind and Source Galileo. The platform is supplied with power from shore through a power cable with a capacity of 75 megawatts. The project would see the use of the cable to provide electricity to the mainland, increasing renewable power generation in Finnmark.

Goliat, operated by Var Energi and Equinor, came on stream in 2016 and has been supplied with power from shore since the start. This reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 300,000 tons annually, the equivalent of emissions from 100,000 cars, according to the company.

Var Energi has also recently confirmed a discovery of oil in the operated 7122/8-1S Countach well in production license PL229 (Goliat), northwest of Hammerfest, including updated volume estimates.

The well was drilled in one of the segments that form the Countach prospect. Preliminary estimates place the size of the discovery in the tested segment between three and 13 million barrels of total recoverable oil equivalents. The potential of the Countach prospect, in the undrilled segments, is estimated at up to 23 million barrels of total recoverable oil equivalents, the company said.

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