Who Owns Equinor?

The Norwegian parliament created Den norske stats oljeselskap, Statoil, in 1972 as the state's vehicle for the North Sea petroleum age, two years after the Ekofisk discovery opened Norway's oil era. From Stavanger, the company learned offshore operations alongside international partners before taking operatorship of its own fields.

Statoil's milestones tracked Norway's rise as an energy power: operatorship of Statfjord and Gullfaks, then the giant Troll gas field, followed by gas export pipelines to Europe that made the company a continental supplier, not just a producer. The state sold part of the company in a 2001 IPO while retaining control.

A 2007 merger with Norsk Hydro's oil and gas division created StatoilHydro, reuniting assets the state had split decades earlier; the name reverted to Statoil in 2009. The combined company was Norway's dominant energy corporation, and international operations in Brazil, the US Gulf of Mexico and the UK expanded through the 2010s.

The 2018 rename to Equinor, a constructed word combining equilibrium and Norway, signaled the pivot toward being a broad energy company rather than a pure oil producer. Under Opedal it committed to net-zero by 2050 for operated emissions and built an offshore wind portfolio including Empire Wind off New York, while Norway's government kept its controlling stake.

Recent years brought strain in renewables: US offshore wind projects hit cost inflation and regulatory turbulence, producing 2025 impairments of about $2.5 billion concentrated in the renewables and international segments. Oil and gas remained the profit engine, with FY2025 total revenues of $106.5 billion and production of 2.137 million barrels of oil equivalent daily.

The company's first operator role came on Statfjord, which began production in 1979 and established the offshore competence that became its signature. Troll followed, one of the largest gas fields ever developed, and the shelf's output eventually made Norway Western Europe's largest oil and gas supplier.

Partial privatization in 2001 listed the company while the state kept roughly two-thirds, a structure that has never changed. The 2007 merger with Norsk Hydro's petroleum division consolidated Norway's industry into a single national champion. The 2018 rebrand to Equinor, combining "equi" and "nor," was meant to signal a company broader than oil, though hydrocarbons still supply nearly all earnings. Johan Sverdrup, which began production in 2019, became the third-largest field ever on the Norwegian shelf.