Norway Raises Oil, Gas Investments Forecasts for 2011
Norway estimated that oil and natural gas investments in the country will rise to a record 148.8 billion kroner ($24 billion) next year, 2.5 billion kroner more than it forecast three months earlier.
Spending will reach 139.4 billion kroner this year, almost in line with the June forecast of 139.7 billion kroner, Norway’s Statistic Agency said today in a quarterly survey of oil and gas companies. That compares with 135.8 billion kroner last year.
Investments in operating fields are expected to rise to 82.2 billion kroner next year from 68.1 billion kroner this year, the agency said. Exploration spending will be 28.1 billion kroner this year and is forecast at 30.6 billion kroner next year. It was 27.9 billion kroner in 2009.
Norway, the world’s seventh-largest oil exporter, is urging producers including Statoil ASA and ConocoPhillips to spend more to keep aging offshore fields alive as output falls and discoveries are smaller. Production has almost halved in the past decade after 40 years of pumping from areas such as Ekofisk, the country’s largest oil field.
Norway’s Petroleum Directorate has set a 10-year goal of adding 5 billion barrels of oil to reserves by 2015, of which about two-thirds are expected to come from enhanced recovery.
Statoil, which has operating rights to about 80 percent of Norway’s oil and gas, plans to raise capital spending 4.8 percent to $13 billion this year, the company said in February. A “substantial proportion” of investments will go to developing the Skarv, Morvin, Gjoea, Goliat and Gullfaks fields off Norway, as well as on improved oil recovery, Statoil said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Meera Bhatia at mbhatia2@bloomberg.net; Marianne Stigset in Oslo at mstigset@bloomberg.net
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