Norway expects its oil production in 2016 to decline in comparison with 2015, Ella Ege Bye Morland, senior communications adviser at Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, said. In late January, the Norwegian authorities said they did not plan to take measures to regulate the country’s oil production. Norwegian oil industry experts said the country’s position on this issue does not matter because even if Norway significantly reduces its oil output at its offshore fields, the global market will hardly feel it, TASS reported. In 2015, the Norwegian offshore oil production was little more than 570 million barrels of oil, which is a relatively small volume compared with 4 billion barrels and 3.7 billion barrels produced by Russia and Saudi Arabia respectively in the same period. According to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, in 2015 oil companies operating in the offshore zone increased production by 3.6% year-on-year to 571.1 million barrels (551.6 million in 2014).
