Norway is one of the top oil producers in the world and among the top suppliers to Europe. Its oil production has risen slowly to touch 1.63 million barrels per day and it has 18 billion barrels of oil equivalent yet to be discovered in Norwegian waters. Half of that is in the Barents Sea, with the rest distributed in the North and Norwegian Seas.
Total investments in oil, gas, manufacturing, mining and electricity for 2015 were around $28 billion, down 9.4 percent year-on-year. For oil and gas alone, the year-on-year decline was 11.8 percent.
NPD – said industry investments are expected to remain suppressed through the latter half of the decade, with levels expected to hold at around $22.5 billion for the next few years before a moderate uptick by 2019. Norway Oil Investment Expected To Fall Again In 2017.
Statistics Norway said lately that oil investments are projected to drop for a third consecutive year in 2017 as low oil prices hammer the country’s oil and gas sector.
Lower investments in oil industry led to increase unemployment in Norway. The number of people employed in the petroleum industry declined 11% in the two-year period ending in 2015.
Norway also is facing the troubles from offshore workers strikes which deepen the crisis of the collapse of crude prices since 2014.
Sources: Statistics Norway, and Norwegian Petroleum Directorate as well as IEA, OPEC, UPI sources