The Norwegian Offshore Directorate, the regulator that oversees the development and extraction of the country's offshore oil resources, said on Thursday that "significant" discoveries are needed to sustain current production levels beyond 2030, without which output looks set to wane.
It said that total resources stand at about 7 billion cubic meters of oil equivalent, but about half of this volume has not yet been discovered, while about 9 billion cubic meters have been extracted from the Norwegian Continental Shelf since the inception of its oil industry.
"If the NCS is to continue to create value and contribute to future energy security, we need more discoveries. We also need to optimise utilisation of the resources already discovered and bring discoveries onstream faster," the directorate's 2026 resource report said.
Achieving this will require "targeted efforts in multiple areas simultaneously", it said. While there have been discoveries in recent years, the volumes are too small to replace what is being extracted, a report summary said, citing Kjersti Dahle, director of offshore new ventures.
While the report says that the warning of an imbalance in extraction and new discoveries is not new, it says Norway is now entering a time when past anxieties about oil depletion are now beginning to be realized but that investment can delay and restrain this trend.
"For Norway, this is about much more than volumes. Slow growth today means a steeper fall post-2030. This in turn translates to less value creation, fewer jobs, weaker energy security for Europe, and diminished government revenues. If these contributions are to be sustained over time, resource growth must increase," the summary said.
Companies have already shown some success in extending the lifetime of resources and finding ways to increase recovery from them. Nonetheless, some of Norway's biggest oil fields, Troll and Johan Sverdrup, will see production "plateau rapidly" from next year.
Estimating that about half of the remaining resources in the NCS have yet to be discovered, the directorate said that more exploration, mapping and production of data are essential, with past investments showing a four-fold return on sums invested in such research.
In a 2050 forecast, a 'high' output scenario predicts that production will be around two thirds of current levels while in the 'low' scenario, production would dive to "almost zero", the report summary said.