Equinor will drill 250 oil and gas exploration wells in Norwegian waters in the next 10 years to fulfil a goal of sustaining output in 2035 at 2020 levels, driven by expectations of prolonged fossil fuel demand, its CEO said on Tuesday.
The Norwegian energy company plans to invest around 60 billion Norwegian crowns ($5.86 billion) annually over the next decade to maintain production levels on Norway's ageing continental shelf, CEO Anders Opedal told an energy conference.
"This is anything but business as usual," Opedal said. "Fighting decline on a mature shelf calls for one of the largest industrial plans Norway has ever seen."
Global oil and gas demand could grow until 2050, the International Energy Agency said earlier this month, departing from its previous expectations of a speedy transition to cleaner fuels and predicting that the world will likely fail to achieve climate goals.
Opedal said the company had been overly optimistic about the pace at which some low-carbon technologies such as CO2 transportation and storage and floating offshore wind would take hold, reflecting a broader industry reassessment as high costs and political resistance slow the shift away from fossil fuels.
Equinor in February this year scaled back its ambitions for developing renewable energy capacity by 2030, following the lead of other major European energy companies in cutting green targets as the market for renewables sours.
"We still believe in these technologies. But we were too optimistic about how fast they would break through," Opedal said on Tuesday.
"I am still convinced they will play a crucial role. But I am more uncertain about when," he said.
($1 = 10.2339 Norwegian crowns)
(Reuters - Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis and Nora Buli, writing by Stine Jacobsen, editing by Terje Solsvik)