Norway's energy minister on Tuesday awarded stakes in 57 offshore oil and gas exploration licences to 19 companies in an annual licensing round. He said the country would further expand the acreage drilled over the coming year.
The allocation for mature areas rose from 53 licences awarded one year ago, while the number of oil and gas firms receiving the permits fell from 20, Energy Minister Terje Aasland told an energy conference.
Equinor received the biggest award with 17 operatorships, followed by Aker BP with 12 and Vaar Energi, a unit of Italy's Eni, receiving six.
The annual predefined area (APA) rounds of new offshore exploration acreage are central to Norway's strategy of extending oil and gas production for decades to come. This is despite activity being set to decrease in the coming years.
"Norway is Europe's most important energy supplier, but in a few years production will begin to decline. Therefore, we need new projects that can slow the decline and deliver as much production as possible," Aasland said.
Other companies receiving operatorships included DNO, ConocoPhillips, Inpex, Okea, OMV and Wellesley Petroleum. The policy is fiercely opposed by the leftist Green Party and by environmental activists which protested outside of the conference venue.
The government will also immediately begin work on next year's mature areas allocation, expanding the acreage eligible for awards by another 70 blocks. This includes 38 in the Barents Sea, the ministry said.
But a planned licensing round for so-called frontier regions was postponed while more preparations are made. This would be the 26th since Norway first discovered oil in the 1960s and the first since 2021.
Acreage that had been proposed by oil firms for the 26th round will, meanwhile, be eligible for award in next year's mature areas awards, it added.
The latest round awarded 31 licences in the North Sea, down from 33 a year ago. Another 21 licences were awarded in the Norwegian Sea, up from 19 permits a year ago, while five licences were awarded in the Barents Sea, up from one a year ago.
(Reporting by Nora Buli and Nerijus Adomaitis; editing by Terje Solsvik and Bernadette Baum)
