The North Sea still holds more than half the total remaining hydrocarbon resources in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea, its petroleum authority has revealed.
The Norwegian Petroleum Authority said the North Sea holds about 51% of the total remaining resources. The distribution of remaining resources in the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea is approximately equal.
The NPD described the North Sea as “the engine in Norwegian petroleum activity” with 65 producing fields at year-end, while the Norwegian Sea has 16 producing fields and the Barents Sea has one
Norway’s estimate of total discovered and undiscovered petroleum resources on the Norwegian continental shelf has increased with 0.1 billion standard cubic metres of oil equivalents (Sm3oe) from last year to about 14.2 billion Sm3 o.e.
The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate confirmed that 47% of these resources have been sold and delivered.
It is expected that 7.6 billion Sm3oe remain to be produced. Of this, 4.7 billion are proven resources. The estimate for undiscovered resources is 2.9 billion Sm3oe, or about 38% of total remaining resources.
Exploration activity in 2015 yielded resource growth estimated at 30 million Sm3oe.
A total of 56 exploration wells were spudded, and 16 discoveries were made.
Six of these were in the Norwegian Sea and 10 were in the North Sea. Several of the discoveries are still being evaluated, and the estimates are uncertain.
Undiscovered resources comprise oil and gas that probably exists and can be recovered, but which has not yet been proven through drilling.
The NPD’s estimate for undiscovered resources is reviewed every other year.
The resource estimate for the undiscovered resources was updated in 2015.
The volume of undiscovered resources is estimated at 2 920 million Sm3oe, an increase of 85 million Sm3oe compared with the 2014 resource accounts.
About half of the undiscovered resources are found in the Barents Sea, the rest are approximately equally divided between the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea.
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