A survey has revealed that Norwegian oil and gas companies plan to increase oil and gas investments in both 2023 and 2024.
Conducted by Norway’s national statistics office, SSB, the survey found that by the end of 2023, oil companies in Norway will have invested Nkr213bn ($20.1bn), an increase of 7.7% on estimates from a similar survey conducted in Q1 of 2023.
Furthermore, estimates of 2024’s total spending from the same parties surveyed stand at Nkr207bn, an increase of 13.7% on Q1 2023’s estimate and a 53% increase on Q3 2022’s estimate.
The estimated investment increases are attributed towards the companies accelerating investment projects planned for 2024 to this year and next. These include both new oil and gas field infrastructure projects as well as production drilling.
Alongside this, the report cites a weakened Norwegian currency as a further driver of investment. The Norwegian krone has struggled in 2023, increasing the cost of investment. This has subsequently contributed to a rise in investments when measured by current prices.
Many Norwegian oil and gas developments began in December 2022, the report adds. This means that while they will not have piled on costs to the 2022 tally, the majority of the costs of these investments have been brought about this year.
SSB stated: “Much of the increase in investments in the second half of the year is linked to the many new developments that started at the end of last year.
“The special thing now is that there are so many developments that started at roughly the same time so that many development projects get a relatively similar escalation at roughly the same time. The result is that the accumulated investments can also increase sharply.”
The report added that the nature of under way infrastructure investments being listed as full losses, should they be stopped, increases the likelihood of completion for the projects that began in December 2022. This increases the likelihood of the accuracy of the oil and gas companies’ estimations for the end of 2023.
In June, Norway announced it had approved 19 new oil and gas field developments with more than $18bn of investments for the coming years.
