Power Point- presentasjon (in pdf format)

It is a great pleasure for me to welcome you all to this information briefing about the opportunities on the Norwegian Continental Shelf and about the framework conditions on the Shelf.

The Petroleum activity in Norway started with the first Licensing Round in 1965. The first well was drilled in 1966 and it was dry. There is however an interesting story about what happened in Norway a couple of years before that. In 1958 the Norwegian Foreign Ministry had asked the Norwegian Geological Survey, which employed the best geological expertise in the country at that time, about the potential for petroleum in the sea outside Norway. The Geological Survey of Norway responded to this enquiry in a letter of February 25th 1958 and stated that there did not exist any petroleum resources on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. They did however open up for the possibility of finding some coal out there under the seabed.

Fortunately history has shown that the evaluation of the geological surveys of Norway was slightly off target, and today Norway has grown to become the third larges oil-exporter in the world.

We are also the second largest supplier of gas to Europe, after Russia, and the gas production is increasing, today about 7 billion cubic feet a day. Norwegian gas sales amount to 13 % of the European gas consumption and from 2006, gas will be exported as LNG to the US and thereby allowing us to take part in the global gas market.

In total the daily petroleum production on the Norwegian Continental Shelf is in excess of 4 million barrels oil equivalents a day.

As the graph behind me illustrates there has been a steep rise in the production on the NCS since the beginning in 1971. The production will stay at a high level the coming years before we estimate that a slow, steady decline will set in. The estimate for the future production illustrated on the graph is based on what my Government has called the long-term scenario for petroleum activity on the NCS. In this scenario we will have oil-production for another 50 years and gas-production for another 100 years. This long-term scenario does not come about by itself, but my Government is dedicated to achieve this goal.

There are considerable volumes of undiscovered oil and gas in both the mature and frontier areas of the shelf. To put the resources and maturity of the NCS into perspective I have made a little illustration comparing parts of the NCS to the GoM.

The size of the petroleum prone part of the Norwegian Sea is more or less the same size as the corresponding part of the US Gulf of Mexico - and remember that the Norwegian Sea is only one of three petroleum provinces in Norway.

Comparing the GoM with that petroleum province - the Norwegian Sea - we can see that there has been drilled one thousand wells in water depths of more than 200 meters in GoM while there has only been drilled 205 wells altogether in the Norwegian Sea. When it comes to the total resources discovered, the GoM is a bit more “oily” than the Norwegian Sea, but it has been proven substantially more gas in the Norwegian Sea than in GoM.

If we look at the deeper areas there have only been drilled 13 wells in the Norwegian Sea compared to 426 in GoM. Within these 13 wells the super giant “Ormen Lange” gas field (about 2,5 billion barrels oil equivalents) has been discovered. The development of this field has just started and it will be on-stream in 2007.

The point with this illustration is that large parts of the Norwegian Continental Shelf are very little explored and there is still a huge resource potential in the region.

Now the Director General of the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, Mr Gunnar Berge will take you through the resource potential on the Shelf before the Secretary General of the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, Mr. Karl-Edwin Manshus, gives you some more details about the Licensing system and the framework conditions on the Shelf.

Both these presentations will be relatively short, 15-20 minutes each, and most of the topic covered in the presentation will also be available in the “Why Norway”- brochure we have handed out and which is also found on the Norwegian Petroleum Directorates’ homepage. Following each presentations we will open for a couple of questions and after this we will be available for bilateral discussions.