Norway: risk of overstretch

摘要

Norway's oil industry is in febrile mood, buoyed by exploration success and growing investment from abroad, yet at the same time forced to confront some awkward realities. The country's liquids output has almost halved since the start of the millennium, to 1.85 million b/d of oil equivalent last year, but the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate now expects both liquids and gas output to rise slightly by 2018, based mainly on fields already in production or approved for development. A surge in production is then due in 2019 with the prospective start-up of the giant Johan Sverdrup field, which has reserves of 1.8 billion-2.9 billion barrels of oil.