Interest in oil exploration in the Norwegian Arctic has dropped dramatically following years of disappointing drilling results.
Only seven oil companies applied for new acreage in the Barents Sea in the latest licensing round, down from 26 in a similar round in 2013. The continued decline will be a blow to the government, which had offered 125 new blocks in eight frontier regions of the Barents.
Norway may not officially be part of the OPEC+ alliance to curb oil supply in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, but next month it looks like the Scandinavian country will do its bit toward helping the producer alliance to avert a global glut of crude.
Norway’s main oil loadings will drop by 261,000 barrels a day in September, according to shipping schedules seen by Bloomberg. The nation’s giant new Johan Sverdrup grade will account for about two-thirds of the slump in cargoes. That makes the country by far the biggest contributor to a month-on-month drop in exports from producers in the Atlantic Basin who have so far released their advance cargo-loading programs.
Ole Lie, a drilling supervisor who’s worked for Norway’s oil giant Equinor ASA since the 1990s, is feeling unloved as many are starting to turn their backs on an industry that’s made the Nordic country one of the richest on Earth.
“I feel stabbed in the back,” said Lie, 54, who works on the Gullfaks C platform in the North Sea. “Politicians are very fond of re-distributing the money we make, but not of providing the support needed to keep the industry alive.”
Western Europe’s biggest petroleum producer has a complicated relationship with oil amid growing concern over its impact on the global climate. Oil was discovered in the North Sea in the 1960s and has made Norwegians rich, but that fairy tale is now losing sway as a growing number of politicians and environmental groups are calling for a shut down of production with as much half of the estimated resources still in the ground.
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OSLO – The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate’s preliminary production figures for August 2019 show an average daily production of 1.647 MMbbl of oil, NGL and condensate, which is a decrease of 67,000 barrels per day compared to July.
Average daily liquids production in August was 1.353 MMbbl of oil, 267,000 bbl of NGL and 27,000 bbl of condensate. Oil production in July is 3.9 percent lower than the NPD’s forecast, and 3.7 percent below the forecast so far this year.
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Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s position on climate change is misaligned with about half of the trade associations it’s a part of, and the disagreement with one is so severe the company will let its membership lapse next year.
The findings were issued in a first-of-its-kind report on whether the company’s association with lobbying groups is undermining its work on climate change. The report is likely to reverberate across the industry, with most of Shell’s peers also members of the same groups and already facing enormous pressure from shareholders to line up their business models with the Paris climate accord.
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Norway’s oil riches are allowing the country to avoid the slow growth, slow inflation trap that’s gripping much of the developed world.
Its central bank on Thursday raised its key interest rate for a second time since September and signaled there’s more to come.
After delivering a rate increase to 1 percent, Norges Bank Governor Øystein Olsen flagged that another hike could come as soon as June, sending the krone soaring. The governor, who also oversees Norway’s $1 trillion wealth fund, acknowledged that his “oil-driven” economy sets his country apart.
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LONDON — The Norwegian government has recommended that the country’s $1 trillion wealth fund sell its holdings in a group of companies that focus on finding and producing oil and gas.
The decision, the result of a two-year review of the giant fund’s investments in fossil fuels, is a compromise that stops short of divestment in major energy companies like Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell. But the fund’s activities are closely watched, and the move seems likely to increase concern among investors about the risks of holding such stocks.
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IRVING, Texas — ExxonMobil has announced that a new partnership with Microsoft will make its Permian basin operations the largest-ever oil and gas acreage to use cloud technology and is expected to generate billions in net cash flow over the next decade through improvements in analyses and enhancements to operational efficiencies.
“The combination of Microsoft’s technologies with our unique strengths in oilfield technologies, production efficiency and integration will help drive growth in the Permian and serve as a model for additional implementation across the U.S. and abroad,” said Staale Gjervik, senior V.P., Permian Integrated Development for XTO. “The unconventional business is fast moving, complex and data rich, which makes it well suited for the application of digital technologies to strengthen our operations and help deliver greater value.”
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Oil and gas companies working in Norway have lowered their investment forecasts for 2019 to 172.7 billion crowns ($20.1 billion) from 175.3 billion crowns seen in November, a survey by the country’s statistics agency (SSB) showed on Thursday.
In 2020 investments are expected to fall to 158.5 billion crowns, according to initial forecasts, though the forecasts could be revised upwards in the months to come, it added.
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See the SSB article on the survey (Norwegian) HERE.
Chart: Norwegian Petroleum Directorate.
STAVANGER — Preliminary production figures for January 2019 show an average daily production of 1,8 MMbbl of oil, NGL and condensate, which is a decrease of 30 Mbp day compared to December 2018.
Total gas sales were 11.2 billion Sm3 (GSm3), which is an increase of 0.5 GSm3 from the previous month.
Average daily liquids production in January was: 1.4 MMbbl of oil, 333 Mbbl of NGL and 28 Mbbl of condensate.
Oil production is approx. 0.5% lower than the NPD’s forecast.
Read the entire article HERE.