For Norway, the collapse in crude prices has a silver lining: Output has exceeded expectations every month for the past two years.
That is likely to continue as oil companies boost efficiency and pump at full pace as revenue dwindles, according to the head of Petoro AS, the state-owned oil company that owns more than a quarter of the petroleum output in Western Europe’s biggest producer, Bloomberg reported.
“Improvement efforts and the focus on profitability have led to very high regularity,” Chief Executive Officer Grethe Moen said in a phone interview on Friday from Stavanger, Norway’s oil hub. “There is no sign this will not last, at least thus far.”
Companies, led by state-controlled Statoil ASA, which operates about 70 of the fields, have slashed investments and sought to increase efficiency to combat a rout that has left oil prices 60% lower than two years ago.
But even as spending on future production dwindles, current output has risen thanks to more efficient operations and past investments that have just started delivering barrels.
Crude production in the Scandinavian nation has exceeded the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate’s forecasts each month since July 2014, while gas output has missed expectations in only three months over that time. The amount of oil pumped in the first six months of 2016 was 2.8% higher than expected, the NPD said in July.
