Norway’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy has offered 47 new production licences on the Norwegian continental shelf, as part of the licencing round APA 2022.
According to the Ministry’s statement, the awards in predefined areas (APA) is an annual exploration round to licence most mature areas on the Norwegian shelf.
The 47 production licences offered in this round include 29 licences across the North Sea, 16 in the Norwegian Sea, and two in the Barents Sea.
The round offered a total of 25 different oil companies with shares in the 47 licences, where 12 companies have received operatorship of more than one licence.
Minister of Petroleum and Energy Terje Aasland said: “I am proud to be able to offer 47 new production licences in the predefined areas to a wide variety of companies.
“Further exploration activity and new discoveries are important to maintain the production of oil and gas over time, both for Norway and Europe.”
The Ministry has announced the licencing round in June last year, calling the companies to submit applications before 12 September 2022.
It had received applications from 26 companies, which have been processed, and were awarded the licences.
In a separate development, Equinor announced that it has received 26 new production licences in the APA 2022 round, including 18 licences as an operator, and eight as a partner.
Among the total 26 licences, 16 are in the North Sea, nine in the Norwegian Sea, and one in the Barents Sea.
The company is planning to participate in 25 exploration wells this year.
Equinor Norway subsurface exploration and production senior vice president Jez Avery said: “Discoveries near existing infrastructure require less volume to be commercially developed, and can be quickly put on stream and with low CO2 emissions.
“We thus maximise the value creation from existing infrastructure that has been developed over a long period on the NCS.
“Exploration is essential to our ambition to transform the NCS from and oil and gas province to a broad energy province. New gas volumes will be key to enabling the development of new value chains for hydrogen for Europe.”
