Equinor ASA
EQNR
recently came up with discouraging results of two wildcat wells near the Fram field in the North Sea, offshore Norway, per reports. The company drilled wildcat wells 35/11-25 S and 35/11-25 A, the permits of which were acquired in April.
The wells are located in the production license 090, wherein operator Equinor has a 45% stake. It has VårEnergi AS (25%), a subsidiary of
Eni SPA
E
, as partner in the license along with Idemitsu Petroleum Norge AS (15%) and Neptune EnergyNorge AS (15%). Notably, these two exploration wells are the 19
th
and 20
th
ones in the license area.
The 35/11-25 S well was drilled to prove the presence of hydrocarbons in late Jurassic rocks, while the 35/11-25 A well was looking for petroleum in the Etive Formation of Middle Jurassic age. However, both the wells came up dry. The company has permanently plugged and abandoned the two wells, which were drilled at a water depth of 352 meters. The Deepsea Atlantic drilling rig was utilized at the site, which is now expected to move to wildcat well 31/11-1 S, located in production license 785 S of the North Sea.
Equinor has strong operations spreading across 30 countries. Apart from being the second-largest supplier of natural gas in Europe, it is also a leading seller of crude oil. It made 16 commercial oil and gas discoveries in 2019 and 2020 each. In the March quarter of 2021 alone, the company completed four commercial discoveries. Some of the notable discoveries were made at the U.S. Offshore Gulf of Mexico and Brazil’s Santos basin. All the discoveries are likely to help Equinor reach a compound annual oil-equivalent production growth rate of 3% through 2026.
Price Performance
Shares of the company have gained 50.5%, outperforming the
industry
’s 23% growth in the past year.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider
The company currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked players in the energy space include
Earthstone Energy, Inc.
ESTE
and
PHX Minerals Inc.
PHX
, each having a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see
the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here
.
Earthstone’s sales for 2021 are expected to jump 87.7% year over year.
PHX Minerals’ bottom line for 2021 is expected to surge 140% year over year.
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