16th Licensing Round on the Norwegian Continental Shelf

16 ^th> Licensing Round on the Norwegian Continental Shelf

In connection with the 16 ^th> licensing round, 13 companies have received offers to explore for and produce petroleum in the Norwegian Sea. The companies will in total be awarded licenses in 34 blocks or parts of blocks.

-The 16 ^th> licensing round was announced in order to secure a good resource management and to give the industry new business opportunities. The round will even out the activity level and contribute to securing the level of employment in the industry, says the Minister of Petroleum and Energy,

Olav Akselsen.

The 16 ^th> licensing round was announced in September 1999 with a deadline for the submission of applications on 31 January 2000. All the companies that applied have received license offers.

The following companies have received offers of operatorships in new areas, numbers in parenthesis:

Norsk Hydro (3), BPAmoco (3), Statoil (2), Agip (1), Chevron (1), Elf/TotalFina (1)

EssoMobil (1), and Shell (1).

The following companies have received offers for participation: Conoco, Enterprise, Fortum, Phillips, and RWE-DEA.

You'll find the map on the Ministry's web site:www.oed.dep.no