Norwegian oil giant Statoil insists it is sticking to its 2016 cost-cutting plans and has no public cost-saving target for 2020.
The assurance came after after news agency Bloomberg reported that the firm planned to cut costs to generate an extra £3billion a year by 2020.
Statoil communications chief Jannik Lindbaek said: “This (report) is based on internal working documents.”
He added the documents seen by Bloomberg were genuine but dated back to before Statoil’s capital markets day, on February 7, when the firm published new financial targets.
In that presentation, Statoil said it would cut costs withthe aim of saving an annual £773million from 2016 without releasing a 2020 target.
The firm declined to say if the early plans for cost savings by 2020 had been discarded in favour of the 2016 target that was published, or if the 2020 figures represent internal planning.
A spokesman for the company in Aberdeen said: “All parts of Statoil are contributing to look for better and smarter solutions that could reduce costs and improve profitability.
“Related to UK activities, one of our contributions is our efforts to reduce capex (capital expenditure), simplify the concept and establish a more robust business case for the Bressay development. “
Statoil announced last November that it was putting the development of Bressay, where it was targeting up to 300million barrels of oil, on hold.
It said it hoped to find a cheaper way of exploiting the resource, located south-east of Shetland.
Recommended for you
