Troll

Troll is Norway's largest gas field, located in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea approximately 80 kilometres west of Bergen. Operated by Equinor on behalf of the Troll licence partners, it consists of the Troll A, Troll B and Troll C platforms. Troll A is a concrete gravity-based structure and the world's tallest man-made moveable object; it processes and routes gas to the Kollsnes terminal via the Troll pipeline. The field supplies roughly 30% of Norwegian gas production, making it one of Europe's single largest gas supply points. In May 2026, a compressor failure on Troll A discovered during a routine annual test on 21 May cut send-out by 34.6 MCM/day from 26–30 May and a further 16.2 mcm/day on 30–31 May. Combined with simultaneous Hammerfest downtime, more than 50 MCM/day of Norwegian supply went offline during the window.

Troll came onstream in 1996 and is designed for a production life extending into the 2050s. Gas production from the field flows to Kollsnes for processing, where it is separated, dried and compressed before Onward export via the Franpipe (to Dunkerque, France), the FLAGS pipeline (to St Fergus, Scotland) and other European interconnectors. The field also produces oil from Troll B and C. Equinor holds the largest licence share; other partners include TotalEnergies, Shell and state holding companies.

Troll's dominance in Norwegian output means operational disruptions carry outsized European market consequences. The May 2026 compressor failure arrived when TTF was already in an inverted summer-winter strip that prevented commercial injection, and happened simultaneously with Hammerfest LNG downtime — testing whether the market had priced asymmetric Norwegian supply risk. The event established the Troll restart date as the active trade hinge: the spread between the 31 May repair promise and actual restart became the key short-term positioning factor across the TTF curve.