EQNR Secures New Production Licenses in Predefined Areas of the NCS

Equinor ASA EQNR secured 35 new production licenses from the Ministry of Energy in the 2025 APA licensing round. These licenses grant the company new acreage in the North Sea, Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea for oil and gas exploration and production in existing and untapped areas of the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS). The awards enable EQNR to expand its exploration and production portfolio across the NCS while strengthening its business model.

Equinor is set to operate 17 of the 35 newly awarded licenses, which are geographically distributed with 21 in the North Sea, 10 in the Norwegian Sea, and four in the Barents Sea.

Equinor intends to drill 20 to 30 exploration wells yearly, with around 80% focused on current infrastructure and around 20% dedicated to new concepts and frontier areas. This strategy aligns with efforts to mitigate the expected decline in oil and gas production from NCS.  

Furthermore, to sustain current production levels, EQNR is targeting the addition of six to eight new subsea developments yearly through 2035.

While awards like these enable EQNR to generate additional, predictable future cash flows, the company’s upstream business is under pressure, with the West Texas Intermediate crude prices trailing a little above $60 per barrel according to oilprice.com.

Equinor currently carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Some other key players in the integrated oil and gas space whose business models are vulnerable to crude price volatility are BP p.l.c. BP, Chevron Corporation CVX and Exxon Mobil Corporation XOM. BP and CVX, each carry a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) at present while XOM, currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

Integrated energy giant BP with around 100,500 employees and operating across 61 countries has a daily upstream production of 2.4 million oil-equivalent barrels.

Both CVX and XOM are integrated energy giants operating across the entire energy chain, from extraction and refining to their final products. In December, CVX extracted oil for the first time from its South N’dola platform in Angola.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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