Norwegian firm Equinor has bought a Danish energy trading company for €400 million (£354m).

The deal supports Equinor’s – formerly Statoil – move from being an upstream oil and gas company towards becoming a “broad energy company”.

Danske Commodities (DC), founded in 2004, is also active in short term gas trading and provides energy market services.

Last year, it traded 318TWh of electricity across 37 countries – equivalent to more than two times Norway’s annual electricity use – and 389TWh of gas across 18 nations. That’s around one third of total Norwegian gas production.

Equinor has committed to invest around 15% to 20% of its spending in new energy solutions by 2030.

Executive Vice President for New Energy Solutions said: “This transaction will strengthen our ability to capture value from our current and future equity production of renewable electricity and supports our aim to grow in new energy solutions.

“We see excellent opportunities to develop our collective understanding of various national markets in a world where renewables to a larger and larger degree will be exposed to market risk.”