Norwegian Continental Shelf sees record exploration in 2025

The twelvemonth 2025 was 1 of the astir prolific successful caller past for Norwegian offshore exploration, according to the Norwegian Offshore Directorate's yearly review.

The twelvemonth saw the second-highest exploration levels successful a decade, with 2021 being the lone twelvemonth to surpass it.

Several notable discoveries, facilitated by precocious technology, contributed to this success, and included the drilling of much than 10km of wellbores.

Despite these achievements, the Directorate emphasised the request for sustained exploration and improvement efforts to counteract an expected downturn successful accumulation levels successful the coming years.

Norwegian Offshore Directorate manager wide Torgeir Stordal said: "It is genuinely inspiring that palmy exploration tin inactive beryllium achieved connected specified a mature shelf."

The report, entitled The Shelf successful 2025, provides an overview of exploration and accumulation activities connected the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS), arsenic good arsenic projections for concern and accumulation implicit the adjacent 5 years.

The twelvemonth 2025 recorded precocious accumulation levels, with lipid output reaching 106 cardinal modular cubic metres (mscm), the highest measurement since 2009.

Production from the NCS was astir arsenic balanced betwixt lipid and gas.

A full of 120 cardinal modular cubic metres was sold, somewhat little than the erstwhile year's grounds figures.

Stordal added: "We expect state accumulation to stay astatine this level implicit the adjacent 3 to 4 years. Norwegian state accounts for astir 30% of EU state consumption, and Norway is Europe's largest supplier aft cutting disconnected Russian gas."

Projected investments for 2026 basal astatine Nkr256bn, a 6.5% alteration from the erstwhile year.

The Directorate anticipates a gradual simplification successful concern levels towards 2030 owed to the completion of existent improvement projects and the lack of equivalent caller ventures.

A diminution successful wide accumulation is besides anticipated by the precocious 2020s, underscoring the request for decisions connected caller tract developments and the attraction of precocious exploration activity.

Without continued investment, determination could beryllium important dismantling wrong the petroleum industry.

Additionally, 2025 witnessed the instauration of the world's archetypal broad worth concatenation for c seizure and storage, reflecting a increasing involvement successful unafraid CO₂ retention connected the NCS.

The Directorate has besides been progressive successful mapping mineral resources and assessing biology conditions successful areas of interest.

"Norwegian Continental Shelf sees grounds exploration successful 2025" was primitively created and published by Offshore Technology, a GlobalData owned brand.