First Oil from Johan Sverdrup Arrives in Mongstad
Oil from the giant Johan Sverdrup field in the North Sea arrived at the Mongstad plant north of Bergen, Norway, for the first time this week.
Oil is piped from the North Sea Johan Sverdrup field, a distance of 283 kilometeres. At the Mongstad complex the oil is stored in caverns and prepared for shipping to markets all over the world.
The first cargo is expected to leave for customers in Asia this week, and contains one million barrels with a market value of around $60 million. It has been sold to China International United Petroleum & Chemicals (UNIPEC), part of the SINOPEC Group, the world’s largest conglomerate in refining, petrochemistry and gas. The cargo will be shipped on the Orpheas tanker via the Suez Canal to China.
The Mongstad plant is expected to receive up to 440,000 barrels of oil per day from Johan Sverdrup when the first development phase reaches peak production. When the second phase is completed in 2022, Mongstad will receive up to 660,000 barrels of oil per day. When Johan Sverdrup is operating at full capacity, Mongstad will receive more than 30 percent of the total oil from the Norwegian continental shelf.
As Johan Sverdrup receives power from shore, oil will be produced with record-low climate gas emissions of less than one kilogram of CO2 per barrel.
“This is a great day for Equinor and the Johan Sverdrup partnership, consisting of Lundin Norway, Petoro, Aker BP and Total. First oil to Mongstad only a few days after production start confirms that the field is producing well,” says Irene Rummelhoff, executive vice president for Marketing, Midstream & Processing (MMP) in Equinor.
Mongstad
The first part of the refinery at Mongstad in Nordhordland, Norway, was opened for operations in 1975. After the facility was expanded in 1989, the process capacity increased from 6.5 to 8 million tonnes of crude oil per year.
The 1990s saw the arrival of pipelines from the Troll B and Troll C platforms and from the Kollsnes and Sture land facilities to Mongstad.
Equinor’s involvement in Mongstad now includes an oil refinery, an NGL processing plant (Vestprosess), a crude oil terminal, a cogeneration plant and the world’s largest technology center for CO2 capture from flue gas.
In terms of tonnage, the harbor at Mongstad is also Norway’s largest, and one of the largest oil and product harbors in Europe, with around 1,500 ships calling every year.