Norway’s Oil and Gas Industry Faces a Major Decline Without New Discoveries

For more than half a century, Norway's oil and gas production has been underpinned by a handful of very large discoveries, the last of which, Wisting in the Barents Sea, was made more than a decade ago. Since then, exploration on the Norwegian Continental Shelf NCS has increasingly focused on smaller finds close to existing infrastructure, allowing operators to bring new volumes online faster and at lower cost.

While this approach has helped sustain production in the near term, it will not be enough to arrest the NCS's projected decline through to 2040. 9 million barrels of oil equivalent per day boepd by 2040, highlighting the scale of the challenge facing the country's upstream sector. The outlook could deteriorate further if exploration activity does not increase.