Exploration on the Norwegian Continental Shelf is highly lucrative. In 2023, every krone spent on drilling saw a 3.2x after-tax payback in terms of the value of the discoveries.
One of the reasons may be the companies’ increased focus on ILX – near-field exploration. ILX often results in small, but profitable discoveries that – given their proximity to infrastructure – quickly can be tied back, resulting in short payback periods. Currently, several operators are targeting about 80 percent ILX wells vs 20 percent frontier drilling.
While ILX is profitable and leads to discoveries that may quickly be brought to production, the strategy does little to increase the proven resources on the NCS significantly. The discoveries do not compensate for the volumes we extract every year, and the Norwegian Offshore Directorate warns that the NCS production may fall drastically from 2030.
NOD urges the industry to explore more and drill more frontier exploration wells. Is the industry responding, and how successful is it?
We are pleased to announce that David Moseley, VP Operations (Europe) at Welligence, a market intelligence firm focused on the upstream oil and gas sector, will give a keynote presentation at the NCS Exploration – Recent Discoveries conference in Oslo.
Moseley will share some insights on how exploration on the NCS compares to global exploration and highlight what the drivers for increased exploration activities may be.
The program can be found on the conference website. The place is Oslo (Fornebu), and the dates are May 7. – 8. 2024.