Oil’s Painful Cost-Squeeze Generates Output Dividend for Norway
- Producers pumped 85,000 barrels a day more than expected
- Norway boosts oil, gas production forecasts for 2017-2020
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Cost cuts are painful, but for Norway’s oil industry making every penny count has also yielded a surprising production windfall.
Thanks to improvements from cheaper, faster drilling to greater regularity in the operation of production platforms, producers pumped 85,000 barrels a day more crude than expected during the past two years, or 6 percent above forecast, according to industry regulator, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate. And it gets better: last week the NPD raised its output forecast for the 2017 to 2020 period by 8 percent, an average of 110,000 barrels a day.