Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on January 13, 2026
2 min readLast updated: January 19, 2026
Equinor aims to finalize plans for the Wisting oilfield in the Arctic, focusing on cost reductions and a new FPSO design to ensure project profitability.
SANDEFJORD, Norway, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Norway's Equinor aims to settle the technical plans this year for developing the Wisting undersea oil discovery in the Arctic after significantly reducing its costs, a senior company executive told Reuters on Tuesday.
Equinor and its partners put development of Wisting, which is in the Barents Sea about 300 km (190 miles) off Norway's northern coast, on hold in 2022. The world's northernmost oilfield is estimated to hold 500 million barrels of crude, but costs ballooned to more than 100 billion Norwegian crowns ($10 billion).
Since then, the partnership has worked to reduce the costs and make the development profitable.
"The current plan is to have a concept selection this year and then to sanction it next year," Kjetil Hove, Equinor's head of Norwegian operations, told Reuters on a sidelines of an energy conference.
"We have improved the project significantly, but there is still work to be done," he said.
Equinor was able to reduce the costs by changing the project's concept, including the floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel.
Originally, the field was to be developed with a circular shaped FPSO, similar to one used at Vaar Energi's Goliat field, but Equinor has now instead opted for a traditional ship design expected to cost less.
Equinor has also reduced the number of wells and subsea installations needed to produce the field, Hove said.
Equinor and Aker BP each have a 35% stake each in the Wisting licence, while Norway's state-owned Petoro has 20% and Japanese INPEX Idemitsu the remaining 10%.
($1 = 10.0824 Norwegian crowns)
(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis; editing by Terje Solsvik and Cynthia Osterman)
An oilfield is a region with an abundance of oil wells extracting petroleum (crude oil) from underground reservoirs.
Cost reduction refers to the process of identifying and implementing ways to reduce expenses while maintaining the same level of output.
A partnership is a business arrangement where two or more individuals share ownership and the responsibilities of managing the business.
An FPSO is a floating vessel used for the processing and storage of oil and gas extracted from offshore fields.
Crude oil is a natural, unrefined petroleum product composed of hydrocarbon deposits and other organic materials.
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