Equinor Building

The Equinor Building, formerly known as the Statoil Building, is a large office complex at Martin Linges vei 33 on Fornebu in Bærum, just west of Oslo. Designed by Norwegian architecture firm A-lab, it was completed in 2012 to bring Statoil’s regional and international operations in the Oslo area together in one building. The structure consists of five long three-storey office blocks stacked across one another around a glass-covered central atrium. Each block is approximately 140 metres long, and the steel bridge-like construction allows sections to cantilever as much as 30 metres beyond their supports. The design was partly inspired by construction techniques used in the offshore oil industry and allowed much of the ground beneath the offices to remain open as landscaped parkland beside the Oslofjord. The site had previously contained a parking garage belonging to the former Fornebu Airport. Statoil changed its name to Equinor in 2018, and the building consequently became commonly known as the Equinor Building. Despite frequently being described as Equinor’s headquarters, the Fornebu building is the company’s Oslo office; Equinor’s corporate headquarters is at Forus in Stavanger.

The Equinor Building has appeared in the television series Occupied (2015–2019) and the reality series Jaget (2023–). In Occupied, its distinctive stacked architecture represents the headquarters of the Norwegian government and parliament, making the building one of the series’ recurring political locations. In Jaget, the building is used as the headquarters of the professional investigation team attempting to track down the programme’s fugitives.

In Occupied (2015–2019), originally released in Norway as Okkupert, the Equinor Building represents the fictional headquarters of the Norwegian government. The political thriller begins after Prime Minister Jesper Berg ends Norwegian oil and gas production in favour of thorium energy, prompting Russia, with the support of the European Union, to intervene and force production to resume. The Fornebu building appears repeatedly during the first season as the centre of political power where Berg and members of his government deal with the escalating Russian presence, negotiations, resistance activity and the gradual erosion of Norwegian sovereignty. The location is particularly notable because the production chose the real offices of Norway’s largest energy company to represent the government whose decision to abandon fossil-fuel production triggers the entire crisis. The building is identified as the government headquarters in the filming credits of numerous first-season episodes, while academic analysis of the series specifically identifies the former Statoil offices as the fictional Norwegian parliament.

In Jaget (2023–), the Equinor Building serves as the headquarters of the programme’s investigation team. The Norwegian reality series follows groups of celebrities who attempt to remain hidden while former police officers and professional investigators, led by former police investigator Johnny Brenna, try to locate and capture them using methods modelled on real police surveillance and investigative work. The programme repeatedly cuts between the fugitives travelling around Norway and the investigators working from their central command headquarters. The distinctive white stacked blocks of the Equinor complex are shown as the exterior of this base, establishing the Fornebu building as the operational centre from which the investigators analyse information, follow electronic and financial traces, issue instructions to field teams and coordinate the search for the contestants.

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