Norway's government on Tuesday made its biggest award of new drilling licences in five years, including a crop of Barents Sea permits to state-controlled Equinor (EQNR.OL), opens new tab, independent Aker BP (AKRBP.OL), opens new tab and Eni (ENI.MI), opens new tab subsidiary Vaar Energi (VAR.OL), opens new tab.
While companies in the past searched mostly for crude oil when exploring in Norway's Arctic region, which unlike gas does not require long and expensive pipelines or LNG terminals to bring the product to market, they have now changed tack.
"There is a step up in the Barents Sea," Equinor's head of Norwegian operations, Kjetil Hove, told Reuters on the sidelines of an energy conference.
"We are going to explore for natural gas in the western part of the Barents Sea together with Vaar Energi and Aker BP," he said.
Norway replaced Russia as Europe's top natural gas supplier after Moscow's invasion in 2022 of Ukraine, and the hunt is now on in Norwegian waters for more gas reserves.
The three companies won stakes in eight new Barents exploration licenses, of which Equinor will operate four while Aker BP and Vaar will manage two each, but with shared ownership for all three groups.
Equinor operates the Barents Sea's only current gas field, Snoehvit, whose output is liquefied at Norway's Hammerfest LNG plant and exported by tankers. There is no free liquefaction capacity at the facility.
