OSLO (Reuters) – Norwegian oil and gas companies should boost investments in exploration and production to slow down an expected decline in output in the coming years, the country’s petroleum industry regulator said in a resource report on Wednesday.
Norway is Europe’s largest gas supplier and a major producer of oil, pumping some four million barrels of oil equivalent per day, but many of its largest offshore fields are in decline and there are currently no new developments scheduled for the 2030s.
Norway’s Offshore Directorate expects the country’s oil and gas output to peak in 2025, it said on Wednesday, in line with previous forecasts, but the subsequent decline will depend on the discoveries and on boosting recovery from existing fields.
“More exploration and investment in fields, discoveries and infrastructure must therefore be made if the decline in production is to be slowed down,” Kjersti Dahle, NOD’s head of technology and analytics, said in a statement.
In January, the NOD said it expected oil and gas investments to fall to 193 billion Norwegian crowns ($18.37 billion) in 2028 from 240 billion crowns in 2024.
The NOD’s base case scenario sees Norway’s petroleum output gradually declining by about two-thirds by mid-century to around 1.4 million barrels of oil equivalent.
($1 = 10.5048 Norwegian crowns)
(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis, editing by Terje Solsvik)
