Dutch Production Continues Suffering, Norway Launches Licensing Round
While Dutch production gives clear indications of difficulty, Norway tries to increase its clout in European gas markets, launching its 2015 oil and gas licensing round in mature areas and eying new opportunities in the Barents Sea.
Norway’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy has launched the APA 2015, comprising blocks in the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea on Tuesday.
‘The predefined areas (APA boxes) have been extended with more blocks since APA 2014. The new areas include 35 blocks in the Norwegian Sea and 11 blocks in the Barent[s] Sea’ reads a note released by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate.
The application deadline is on 2 September 2015. The awards are expected to be announced during the first quarter of 2016.
Also on Tuesday, Statoil announced it will increase cooperation with Eni Norge, Lundin Norway, OMV and GDF Suez to solve ‘operations tasks tied to exploration in the Barents Sea.’
The project will initially last for three years, and it will be particularly targeted to the 23rd licensing round announced in January 2015 by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy.
“We are taking operational responsibility seriously and have connected leading companies with operations in the Barents Sea to work together to find good and robust solutions for the tasks we see ahead, especially considering the new areas that have been opened in the Barents Sea south-east," Irene Rummelhoff, Statoil's senior vice president for exploration in Norway, said in a separate press release, referring to the project initiated by Statoil and Eni Norge.
The aim of the cooperation is to decrease explorations costs in the are for the next five years.
Also on Tuesday, TGS reported it has signed an agreement with Thalassa Holdings Ltd/WGP to acquire P-Cable 3D seismic data in the Norwegian Barents Sea for 90 days, starting by the end of next week.
NETHERLANDS
Meanwhile, Dutch-government-controlled trading company GasTerra reported an unplanned outage of UGS Grijpskerk, explaining that there is no indication when the outage will be solved.
‘UGS Grijpskerk connected to the Dutch national grid operated by GTS is out of order. The immediate physical loss resulting from this outage is according to GasTerra’s estimate more than 10 million m3 per day, or the hourly equivalent value’ the company, in which Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil hold an equal share of the remaining 50%, wrote on Tuesday afternoon.
UGS Grijpskerk is operated by NAM. According to its website, the company produces about 75% of all Dutch gas. The Netherlands is the first gas producer in the European Union.
Grijpskerk is a village in the Dutch province of Groningen. Last week, a Dutch court issued a preliminary ruling on the requests brought forward by locals, saying it would order a halt to production around the village of Loppersum in the province of Groningen, under certain conditions.