Centrica Enery Norway has awarded Aibel a frame agreement for field development projects on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. The company said all project phases have been included in the deal including various study phases and pre-engineering work.
The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate wants unmanned wellhead platforms to be considered more often as an alternative to subsea tie-back in connection with development decisions.
With oil prices still wobbling around $50, Norway is in danger of a recession that could drive its benchmark interest rates, already at a record low, to zero. That’s what economists at Svenska Handelsbanken AB in Oslo say as they warn that “recessionary risks are significant.” The central bank in September cut rates to 0.75 percent and signaled more than a 50 percent chance for a third reduction since the drop in oil prices accelerated, about a year ago. Handelsbanken sees three cuts next year, bringing the benchmark to zero by the end of 2016. “The Norwegian economy will now experience a deeper downturn than during the financial crisis, with output expected to stay below its potential for longer than it did last time,” Kari Due-Andresen and Knut Anton Mork, economists at Handelsbanken, wrote in their latest report.
The Troll A platform rocks like a boat as North Sea waves pound its four gigantic concrete legs, but monitors inside the control room show a steady flow of natural gas continues unabated -- enough to meet the needs of 10 million homes in Europe. Norway is on track for record gas production this year after Statoil ASA put an end to technical issues that limited Troll’s capacity. And deep within the windswept jumble of pipes and machinery that top the platform 65 kilometers (40 miles) off the Nordic nation’s coast, two newly installed compressors stand ready to maintain the field’s unequaled capacity well into the next decade. “These compressors provide an extra muscle, they strengthen the Norwegian gas machine,” Grete Haaland, senior vice president for asset management at Statoil’s marketing, midstream and processing business unit, said in a presentation on the Troll platform Wednesday. “They increase Troll’s ability to deliver more gas in the short and long term. That’s extremely important for us.”
Centrica Energy Norway and its partners will develop the Butch discovery in the North Sea as a subsea tie-in to the Ula field. Several options had been evaluated for the field which was discovered four years ago in the Norwegian part of the North Sea. Two options – a tie-in or standalone production jack-up solution – were assessed for the site which has estimated recoverable reserves of between 27million and 51 million barrels of oil equivalent.
ACE Winches said it has completed an order for Statoil for their subsea line modification project designed for use on the Troll B platform offshore Norway. The Norwegian operator had required a rental Pull in Winch System including wire rope and HPU. The rental package supplied incorporated a compact design and weight optimized linear winch, designed for use in land based shore pulls and offshore wire rope deployment and recovery operations.
Total has signed an agreement to sell a 15% interest in the Gina Krog field in Norway to Tellus Petroleum in a NOK1.4billion deal. The French company’s president of exploration and production said the move was as a result of a “full comparative review” of its global asset portfolio. The transaction still has to be approved by the Norwegian authorities.
MOL Group will be continuing its focus on the UKCS and Norway after snapping up assets in both regions since last year. Brian Glover, exploration and business development senior vice president for the company, spoke exclusively to Energy Voice as it visited the firm's headquarters in Hungary. Everyday this week Energy Voice will be briefing from Hungary on the latest developments in MOL's operations across the globe.
Norway, western Europe’s biggest oil and gas producer, warned companies that failing to extract less profitable barrels could weaken their chances of getting exploration blocks in a new area of the Arctic Barents Sea.
Aker Solutions has teamed with German firm Man Diesel & Turbo to develop the next-generation in subsea compression systems that can be used even at the smallest oil and gas fields.
Norwegian oil companies are turning on the spigots to counter plunging crude prices.
Statoil has awarded the NOK600million ($74.5million) contract for construction of the converter station at Haugsneset to the field to Norwegian firm Aibel.
Preliminary production figures for North Sea oil production in Norway for September 2015 showed a slight dip from the previous month before.
Offshore supply vessel owners are facing a "very tough" 2016 with the prospect of much of the supply fleet being laid up due to the oil slump.
From Oslo to Doha, Riyadh to Moscow, governments that rode crude’s historic rise to unprecedented wealth are now being forced to start repatriating their rainy- day funds just to make ends meet. The halving of oil to less than $50 a barrel has the potential to alter one of the most powerful economic and political forces of the past half century: the rise of the petrostate. These countries led a surge in state investments in the U.S. and Europe that now totals about $7.3 trillion globally, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. During the last boom, the oil countries flaunted their wealth abroad by buying stakes in iconic companies such as Barclays Plc as well as trophy assets including Manhattan hotels, European soccer clubs and London luxury homes, often in the face of opposition from the local public. Such swagger is fading.
Statoil said a spill has been discovered during the loading of oil from the Statfjord A platform tanker offshore Norway. The company said loading to the tanker has been stopped and supply to the pipe and loading system from Statfjord A has been closed. A spokesman said production from Statfjord A is operating normally in the meantime.
As Norway prepares to make the first withdrawals from its $820 billion wealth fund, the government is considering letting it take on riskier investments. The Finance Ministry is looking into whether to boost the fund’s stock allocation to beyond 60 percent as the investor struggles with record low bond yields. The government is forming a panel to assess the impact of changing the limit that will report back in 2017.
Statoil remained tight-lipped on reports that the Aasta Hansteen gas field off Norway could be delayed until 2018 due to delays in constructing its platform.
Talks are taking place between Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman’s LetterOne Group about purchasing stakes in a number of Norwegian oil and gas fields, according to reports. According to the Financial Times the company is looking to gain assets owned by Eon in a deal estimated to be worth $1billion. The move signals a break away from the UKCS after the government urged LetterOne to sell North Sea assets.
Norway’s government will propose spending a record amount of its petroleum wealth to cover budget needs as it seeks to rescue the economy from the plunge in oil prices, according to state broadcaster NRK. The minority coalition plans on spending a record 193 billion kroner ($23 billion) of oil income in 2016, up from an estimated 168.8 billion kroner this year, NRK reported, without citing where it got the information. That represents 2.8 percent of its wealth fund, the world’s biggest, NRK said. The government seeks to keep oil cash spending within 4 percent of the value of the fund. The budget will be revealed at 10 a.m. Wednesday in Oslo. “The budget will be well-adapted to handle challenges both in the short and long term,” Finance Minister Siv Jensen said to reporters as she was leaving her house early Wednesday. It will be a “good” and “expansionary” spending plan, she said.
A decision by the Norwegian minority government to start making withdrawals from the country’s sovereign fund could mark a “radical change” for the region. Leading expert Professor Jon Kleppe, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, said the sovereign fund has risen from NOK 6300billion at the start of the year to NOK 7000billion. He said the increase was largely down to the weakening of the Norwegian Kroner next to the US dollar.
A brand new oil company has been launched in Norway, despite the current industry slump. Okea is the second to be born in the country since the summer of 2015 when Origo was rolled out at Offshore Northern Seas. And it is the fourth over this period if the two UK companies Verus (derived from Bridge Energy) and Siccar Point are included. All have private equity funding underpinning them. In the case of Okea, Seacrest Capital Group has got behind the newly created oil & gas development and production company headquartered in Trondheim.
For Norway, the future may already be here.
Norwegian shipping heavyweight GC Rieber has agreed to take early redelivery of the survey vessel Polar Duke from Dolphin Geophysical as part of an overall restructuring agreement to improve Dolphin's competitiveness in a challenging market.
Centrica has been given the go-ahead by Norway's Petroleum Safety Authority to drill a shallow pilot hole to establish there is no shallow gas in block 8/10 in the North Sea prior to further activity in the prospect.