After cutting costs, Equinor hopes that it can finalize the technical plan for the world's most northern oilfield.

Equinor, a Norwegian company, aims to finalize the technical plans for the development of the Wisting?undersea?oil discovery in the Arctic this year after reducing?its?costs significantly. ?on Tuesday.

In 2022, Equinor, along with its partners, put the development of Wisting on hold. Wisting is located in the Barents sea, about 300 km (190 mile) off Norway's north coast. Although the world's most northern oilfield was estimated to contain 500 million barrels, costs ballooned up to 10 billion Norwegian crowns (about $10 billion).

Since then, the partnership worked to reduce the costs and make development profitable.

Kjetil?Hove, Equinor’s?head for Norwegian operations, said on the sidelines of a conference about energy that "the current plan" is to select a concept this year, and sanction it in the next?year."

He said, "We have made significant improvements to the project but more work is needed."

Equinor reduced costs by changing project's concept, which included the floating production storage and offloading vessel (FPSO).

Originally the field was going to be developed using a?circular shaped FPSO?, similar to that used by Vaar Energi at its Goliat Field?, but Equinor chose a more traditional ship design, which is expected to cost less.

Hove stated that Equinor has also reduced the number?of?wells?and subsea installation needed to produce?the field.

Equinor, Aker BP and Norwegian state-owned Petoro each have 35% of the Wisting license. The remaining 10% is held by Japanese INPEX Idemitsu. $1 = 10.0824 Norwegian Crowns (Reporting and editing by Terje Sollsvik, Cynthia Osterman).

(source: Reuters)