Equinor has reached an agreement to offload its 77.8% operated interest in the King Lear gas discovery on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) to Aker BP for a cash consideration of $250m.

The King Lear gas discovery was made in 1989 in Block’s PL 146 and PL 333 in the Ekofisk area of the NCS. It is estimated to have net recoverable resources of 77 million barrels of oil equivalent.

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It is located around 50km south of Aker’s Ula oil field centre.

Equinor southern North Sea operations senior vice president Jez Averty said: “This transaction is a further example of our strategy of capturing value from active portfolio management through the oil price cycles.

“We are divesting a low-priority asset in our NCS portfolio to a buyer who sees higher value. By doing so we unlock capital for investment in projects that offer higher returns for Equinor.”

Completion of the transaction is subject to receipt of approval of Norwegian authorities and project partner.

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"The fully automatic, unmanned and remote-operated platform is digitalisation in practice, and I am proud of Equinor and its partners having chosen this in-house developed solution."

In a separate development, Equinor has commenced production at the Oseberg Vestflanken 2 field in the North Sea. Completed at a cost of Nkr6.5bn ($793.62m), the field has recoverable resources of 110 million barrels.

The new Oseberg H platform is remote-operated from the Oseberg field centre.

Equinor Technology, Projects and Drilling executive vice-president Anders Opedal said: “The fully automatic, unmanned and remote-operated platform is digitalisation in practice, and I am proud of Equinor and its partners having chosen this in-house developed solution.”

The company noted that the unnamed platform is a pilot and it is working on further developing the concept.

Located at water depth of 110m, the Oseberg Vestflanken 2 field is expected to be in production until 2040.

Equinor Energy holds a 49.3% interest in the field. The company’s partners in the field include Petoro (33.6%), Total E&P Norge (14.7%) and ConocoPhillips Skandinavia (2.4%).