The energy company Equinor is the second largest gas supplier in Europe and the largest energy group in Northern Europe. Equinor not only operates oil and gas production facilities, but also various offshore wind farms.
Equinor is thus a broad-based energy company that uses oil, gas, renewables and hydrogen to supply energy to around 170 million people.
From state-owned enterprise to international energy company
The Norwegian energy company Equinor was founded in 1972 as a purely state-owned company under the name Statoil. To date, the Norwegian state holds 67 percent of the shares in the Group.
In 2018, the company, headquartered in the Norwegian city of Stavanger, changed its name to Equinor. This was to support the realignment of the original gas and oil supplier into a broad-based energy company that was taking place at the time. Equinor now employs around 20000 people in more than 30 countries worldwide.
The company’s shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the Oslo Stock Exchange. Equinor has now become the second largest gas supplier in Europe with a market share of 25 percent. The company is also considered the world’s largest operator of offshore oil and gas production facilities.
Germany purchases around 25 percent of its natural gas from Equinor. In addition, the energy group from Norway has been operating the “Arkona” offshore wind farm in the Baltic Sea near the island of Rügen in Germany together with E.ON since 2019.
Broad portfolio
Equinor’s field of activity includes numerous business areas. For example, the Group is active as a supplier of oil, gas and wind energy. This includes the discovery and exploration of new oil and gas fields as well as the extraction and production and sale of the valuable and important energy raw materials.
Equinor produces its crude oil and natural gas mainly on the Norwegian continental shelf. Around 70 percent of total production takes place in Norway. But increasingly, the Group’s oil and gas production is also taking place worldwide – for example in Algeria, Nigeria and Brazil.
Equinor is equally active with its numerous exploration projects all over the world. In total, Equinor is active in more than 30 countries worldwide and operates over 40 floating or fixed installations for the production of oil and gas.
In total, the Norwegian energy company produces around 2 million barrels of energy-related products per day. In addition to oil and gas, solar energy and offshore wind are playing an increasingly important role.
In addition to the Arkona offshore wind farm in the Baltic Sea, Equinor operates the Sheringham Shoal, Dudgeon and Hywind Scotland wind farms in the UK, which now supply around 65,000 British households with energy. Equinor is now also considered one of the largest offshore wind farm operators in the world.
