The Norwegian authorities have given the green light to Aker BP for the start-up of production at the Hanz oilfield, part of the Ivar Aasen field in the North Sea.

Discovered in 1997, the Hanz field is integrated into the development plan for the Ivar Aasen field, which lies approximately 200km off the coast of Stavanger.

The Ivar Aasen field is located at the Utsira Height in the northern part of the North Sea.

The Hanz field, which is in production licence 028, will repurpose the subsea installations from the decommissioned Jette field.

Aker BP, which own a 35% stake in the field, leads the consortium as the operator of production licence 028 B, alongside partners Equinor, holding a 50% interest, and Sval Energi with the remaining 15%.

Aker BP has projected the development costs for the Hanz field to be around Nkr4.2bn ($396.68m).

As per the Aker BP estimates, the field holds recoverable resources of 3.1 million standard cubic metres of oil equivalent, translating to approximately 19.65 million barrels of oil equivalent.

The company anticipates that the Hanz field will commence operations in the first quarter of 2024.

Norwegian Offshore Directorate licence management assistant director Tomas Mørch said: “A development of Hanz utilising existing infrastructure and an alternative method for pressure support contributes to good utilisation of resources.”

In 2021, Aker BP and its partners announced final investment decisions for the Hanz oil and gas discovery.

Last year, Aker BP started production from the KEG project within production licence (PL) 203 in the Alvheim area offshore Norway.

Aker BP operates the project and is partnered with ConocoPhillips Skandinavia.

The KEG development involved drilling of around 42km from a total of four multi-branch wells in the reservoir.