Denmark Awards 16 Offshore Licences
Danish energy minister Lars Christian Lilleholt announced the award of 16 new oil and gas exploration licences in the Danish North Sea to 12 companies on April 6, under the country's seventh licensing round. The permits last six years but can be renewed out to 30 years in length.
Danish oil and gas production will decline in the coming decades, placing a strain on state revenues and Denmark's self-sufficiency in petroleum, and some operators are already thinking of decommissioning. On April 4, Maersk said it was mulling closure of the key Tyra offshore gas process hub which today handles 90% of Denmark's current gas production.
The 12 successful companies are: Ardent, Dana Petroleum (both from UK), Danoil (Denmark), Germany-based DEA, Denmark's Dong, Dutch firm Dyas, Italy's Edison (part of French group EDF), Hansa Hydrocarbons (UK), US firm Hess, Denmark's North Sea Fund (Nordsøfonden), Sweden's PA Resources, and Germany's Wintershall (part of BASF).
Full details of licences are given here with a map provided here. Ardent is to operate four of the blocks, Wintershall three blocks, Dana, Dong and DEA two each, with Edison, Hess and Hansa one block each.
The state's North Sea Fund, never an operator, said that the 16 licences are "at the first stage of investing a total of around DKK 1bn (€135mn), of which the fund's share will be approximately DKK 200mn."
"Nordsofonden looks forward to work together with the licence holders to investigate more of the Danish subsurface in order to increase the Danish reserves," said its director Peter Helmer Steen. It said the new awards mean the number of licences in its own portfolio increases from 10 to 26.
Germany's DEA, owned by Russian-run fund LetterOne, said it had been awarded two licences -- its first ever in Denmark -- with a total area of about 530sq km2.
Denmark's Treasury had received over DKK 404bn (€54.3bn) of petroleum revenues from the North Sea since 1963. Aggregate oil and gas revenues topped DKK 1.01 trillion (€136bn) while those in 2014 had been DKK 19bn. Lilleholt said the industry had created thousands of jobs that should be maintained many years into the future, and hoped the new licences would do just that.