Statoil and four partners have agreed to build a $343 million link to connect the Edvard Grieg and Ivar Aasen oilfields with existing pipelines in the North Sea, the company said on Thursday.

The fields, now under development, are located on the Utsira High geological formation, which also includes the giant Johan Sverdrup field, which may hold up to 3.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent. That field is yet to be developed.

The new 43 km pipeline will start in autumn 2015 to transport oil to the nearby Grane oilfield, which is already connected by pipeline to the Sture oil terminal on Norway's west coast.

Aside from Statoil, the other partners in the Grieg and Aasen fields are Sweden's Lundin Petroleum, Germany's Bayerngas and Wintershall, which is a unit of German chemicals giant BASF, Norway's Det norske and Austria's OMV.