Norway’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy aims to award new production licenses in the 24th Licensing Round before the summer of 2018. The round covered newly opened, frontier acreage including 102 blocks or partial blocks of which nine were in the Norwegian Sea with the remaining 93 blocks in the Barents Sea. Eleven companies applied for production licenses by the Nov. 30 deadline.
Newly appointed Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) exploration director Torgier Stordal said the “list of applicants is dominated by large and medium-sized companies with good technical and financial capacity.”
No new acreage was opened in the 24th licensing round, which is similar to the 23rd round that drew production licenses from 26 companies. NPD also reported that 39 companies delivered a “record-breaking number of applications,” in the predefined area (APA) round in 2017, signifying that many companies are prioritizing exploration in mature areas this time around.
The companies that have production licenses under review include AS Norske Shell, AkerBP ASA, Centrica Resources (Norge) AS, DEA Norge AS, Idemitsu Petroleum Norge AS, Kufpec Norway AS, Lundin Norway AS, OMV (Norge) AS, RN Nordic Oil AS, Statoil Petroleum AS, and Wintershall Norge AS.
NPD is currently evaluating applications based on companies’ technical expertise and geologic understanding of the area of interest. All announced blocks are subject to fishery and environmental terms and constraints, NPD said.
Contact Tayvis Dunnahoe at [email protected].