25 February 2016, News Wires – The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate has increased its estimate of total discovered and undiscovered petroleum resources on the Norwegian shelf by 3.5 billion cubic feet of oil equivalents to around 500 billion cubic feet.
Forty seven percent of these resources have been sold and delivered, according to the NPD, meaning around 268 billion cubic feet of oil equivalents remain to be produced.
Of this amount, 165 billion cubic feet are proven resources. The estimate for undiscovered resources is 102 billion cubic feet, or about 38 percent of total remaining resources. Around half of the undiscovered resources are thought to be located in the Barents Sea, with the rest thought to be equally divided between the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea.
Exploration activity in 2015 yielded resource growth estimated at 1.05 billion cubic feet of oil equivalents. A total of 56 exploration wells were spud, with 16 discoveries were made. Six of these were in the Norwegian Sea and ten were in the North Sea. Many of these discoveries are still being evaluated.