Norwegian oil and gas producer StatoilHydro said today it wants to maintain production off Norway at 1.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed) for 10 years and boost ouput by 2012.
"We have an ambition to maintain production of 1.5 million boed for 10 years," Tim Dodson, senior vice president for exploration and production off Norway, told a news conference.
StatoilHydro said it intends to grow output from Norwegian fields by 150,000 boed until 2012.
Output from many older Norwegian oilfields is declining after decades of production. But operators, such as StatoilHydro, have in past years turned to more gas production.
Including international operations, StatoilHydro seeks to boost production to 2.2 million boed by 2012 from 1.9 million seen this year.
Dodson said this year's positive exploration results with a 65 per cent success rate were important to reaching the Norwegian production goal, espeically the Dagny find in the North Sea.
StatoilHydro said Dagny and the connected discovery of Ermintrude hold 200 million barrels of oil equivalent or more.
"Potentially, can expand that. There is definitely potential to find more oil further down (in Dagny). We have a huge 500 metre column of oil, we're not used to that anymore," he said.
Dodson said that StatoilHydro's exploration wells in the "high risk, high reward" area in the Barents Sea were mixed this year, finding some hydrocarbons but usually not the volumes necessary to further develop prospects.
Reuters