Equinor announced on Tuesday it has received 35 new production licenses on the Norwegian continental shelf as part of Norway's 2026 Awards in Predefined Areas licensing round. The company will operate 17 of these licenses. The acreage is located in the North Sea, Norwegian Sea, and Barents Sea.
Twenty-one licenses are in the North Sea, ten in the Norwegian Sea, and four in the Barents Sea. This comes as Norway's offshore sector works to counter natural production declines and maintain stable energy supplies for Europe.
Equinor stated the awards support its plan to sustain high drilling activity, targeting 20 to 30 exploration wells per year. About 80 percent of this drilling will be near existing infrastructure, allowing for quicker, lower-cost developments. The remaining 20 percent will focus on less-explored areas and new geological concepts.
The company reported strong exploration results in 2025, with 14 discoveries from 31 wells drilled, including seven operated by Equinor. These finds added an estimated 125 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent.
Equinor has emphasized that new discoveries are needed to address an expected decline in Norwegian oil and gas output over the next decade. The company aims for production of around 1.2 million barrels of oil and gas per day from the Norwegian continental shelf in 2035, similar to 2020 levels.
Access to new acreage is critical for Equinor as it seeks to develop six to eight new subsea projects annually through 2035, a significant increase from current levels. The company also highlighted its use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to speed up seismic interpretation, improve well planning, and aid real-time decision-making.
As Europe's largest gas supplier, Equinor operates an extensive network of offshore and onshore infrastructure, including gas processing plants, pipelines, terminals, and an LNG facility. Integrating new oil and gas volumes into this existing system remains a key part of its strategy.