Equinor and Aker BP Partner to Develop Challenging Oil and Gas Discoveries

By Dominic Chopping

Energy companies Equinor and Aker BP have entered a strategic collaboration to develop oil and gas reservoirs that sit in hard-to-extract geology on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.

In a joint statement Monday, the companies said that large volumes of oil and gas are found in tight reservoirs, where oil and gas flow very slowly through dense rock.

Using conventional extraction methods, only a limited share of the resources can be recovered from tight reservoirs, and many discoveries are too costly to develop on a standalone basis, they said.

The Regulator, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate, has therefore encouraged companies to work together, estimating recoverable resources of around 2.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent in mapped tight reservoirs.

"Through technology development, standardization and cooperation across multiple projects, the companies aim to enable the profitable development of more discoveries and increase the oil and gas recovery rate," the companies said.

The collaboration covers prospects, discoveries and projects across the Norwegian Continental Shelf, with Aker BP and Equinor planning to contribute relevant opportunities from their respective portfolios.

"By taking a portfolio-wide approach and developing common solutions, we can reduce costs and accelerate technology development," said Kjetil Hove, head of exploration & production Norway at Equinor. "This can make more of these discoveries commercially viable."

Aker BP Chief Executive Karl Johnny Hersvik said that together, the companies can develop solutions more quickly and deploy them at a larger scale.

"We are starting this work immediately," he said.

Write to Dominic Chopping at dominic.chopping@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 26, 2026 07:02 ET (11:02 GMT)