Norwegian oil and gas giant Equinor and its partners in the Troll and Oseberg offshore fields are looking into options for building a floating offshore wind farm, which could deliver power to offshore oilfields and Bergen area, ensuring a stable long-term power price and reduced business interruption risks for these fields, according to CLEW.

Troll and Oseberg oilfields are operated by Equinor and located in the North Sea off Norway. Equinor’s partners in these offshore fields are Petoro, TotalEnergies, Shell, and ConocoPhillips.

As revealed by Equinor on Friday, this floating offshore wind farm project, named Trollvind, would have an installed capacity of about 1 GW and an annual production of 4.3 TWh with a startup in 2027. The wind farm would be located in the Troll area, some 65 kilometres west of Kollsnes in Vestland County. It could provide much of the electricity needed to run the Troll and Oseberg offshore oilfields through an onshore connection point.

The Bergen area already serves several of these installations with power – and needs more input to its electricity grid. The plan is that the partnership will buy as much energy as the wind farm can produce at a price that can make the project possible, the Norwegian giant explained.

Equinor stated three main objectives of this project envisioned by the partnerships. Namely, power from Trollvind could make a solid contribution towards electrification of oil and gas installations, it could accelerate offshore wind development in Norway and deliver extra power to the Bergen region.