March 4 (UPI) — Norway’s government pushed forward on expanding oil and gas exploration on the continental shelf Friday with new permits for the North and Norwegian Seas.
The Petroleum Safety Authority said Friday it granted a permit to Aker BP to drill an exploration well in the Volund oil field in the North Sea. Volund is in service through a floating production platform and Aker BP aims to probe the potential for new hydrocarbons about 4 miles west of the infrastructure in place at Volund.
In its fourth quarter report, Aker BP reported production from the Volund field was lower than the previous quarter by 16 percent.
Elsewhere, the regional subsidiary of Spanish energy company Repsol was given permission by the PSA to drill an exploration well in the deep waters of the Norwegian Sea at a prospect named Stordal.
“Drilling is scheduled to start in early March and to last 33 days, or 48 days if a discovery is made,” the PSA said in a statement.
The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, the national regulator, reported preliminary production for January at 2.02 million barrels of oil, natural gas liquids and condensate. Of that total, January production for oil was about 1.6 million barrels per day, which was about 4.3 percent lower than December.
The NPD offered no data to explain the decline. Final production figures for December show an average daily production of oil at 1.7 million barrels per day, about 3 percent, or 60,000 barrels per day less, than November.
Norway is one of the larger energy producers in the world and a main supplier to the European market, aside from Russia.
