Norway Offers Upstream Licences

Norway's offshore regulator is today offering 56 new production licences to 29 companies, it said January 17. The offers follow assessment of applications from 33 companies in the Awards in Predefined Areas (APA) 2016.

Of the total, 36 are in the North Sea, 17 in the Norwegian Sea and just three in the under-explored Barents Sea. Over a fifth are additional acreage to existing production licences. Three of the new licences are stratigraphically divided and only apply to levels below/above a defined stratigraphic limit.

“It is very positive that the oil companies still see potential on the Norwegian shelf, and that interest to invest in exploration in mature areas is significant,” said the exploration director in the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, Sissel Eriksen. “This year, interest has been particularly high for areas in the North Sea. The APA scheme demonstrates that exploration in mature areas provides further geological understanding and improved data, which creates exciting, new exploration possibilities,” said Eriksen (pictured below).

(Credit: NPD)

A total of 16 out of 18 discoveries in 2016 were made in areas comprised by the APA scheme.

“It is an advantage that the geology is quite familiar, though surprises still occur. There are both shut down fields and existing fields that are approaching the end of their production in the APA areas, with infrastructure that can be exploited. It is therefore important that we fully explore the surrounding acreage, to ensure potential resources are not lost,” she said.

This year, there has been a lot of interest in the areas around the shut down Frigg field, where new discoveries have been made in recent years. Considerable interest has also been shown in areas near earlier discoveries in the Barents Sea and Norwegian Sea.

Statoil said it had secured 29 exploration licences in the APA round: 16 as an operator, and 13 as a partner.

William Powell