"Hydro has an exceptionally interesting portfolio in the Norwegian offshore sector, one that steadily builds the basis for attractive new projects. No place has that been more clear than Troll, where we are now ready to recover 500 million barrels of oil from new reservoirs," said Executive Vice President Tore Torvund at Hydro's Capital Markets Day in Oslo on Wednesday.
Hydro has worked hard since the mid-1980s to secure profitable production from the thin oil layer on the Troll field. The commercial oil reservoirs in the field have gone from zero – when Hydro started test production of a horizontal well on Troll in 1986 – to some 1,400 million barrels today.
”New knowledge and emphasis on technological development together with our suppliers has steadily brought us to today’s situation, where Troll is one of the most important oil fields in the Norwegian sector, as well as being the world’s largest offshore gas field. We have staked out our future course. Our plan is to increase recoverable oil reserves in Troll by more than 30 percent – to 2 billion barrels of oil,” Torvund said during his presentation.
Hydro has developed Troll’s oil resources with the use of more than 110 horizontal wells, a large number of which have production extensions in the reservoir. High-precision horizontal drilling and production wells with up to six producing extensions have been developed in close cooperation with Hydro’s suppliers within drilling and well technology.
Hydro is also now working with its partners on future gas production from Troll, to build the basis for developing yet another new phase in the field’s lifetime.
The main challenge of the project is to determine whether it is possible to accelerate gas recovery from one part of the Troll field while simultaneously preparing for increased oil recovery from another part. The condition for achieving our ambition of increased oil production is that gas recovery from the part where the oil lies does not start too early.