The Potential For Satellite And Marginal Field Developments On The Norwegian Continental Shelf
Authors: Raustein Odd , Abrahamsen L.E. , Einang Gunnar 
Published: October 2008

Norway is faced with decreasing field sizes in hostile waters, On the other hand, approximately 620 billion 1993-NOK have been invested in field installations and transport systems. These installations will have significant available processing and transport capacity in the future, and thus represent a valuable infrastructure.

This paper describes the resource situation and the installed infrastructure on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. Then the potential of still maintaining a high activity level in field developments is outlined.

PETROLEUM RESOURCES

The Norwegian continental shelf embraces roughly 1.1 million square kilometers of sedimentary rocks (Fig, 1,). Since the onset of the petroleum activities in 1965 and up to present, 200 production Iicences have been awarded. The area covered by the Iicences is some 130 000 square kilometers, which means 12% of the total expanse of sedimentary rock. Further, about 40% of the shelf has been opened for exploration drilling. Large areas therefore remain to be explored.

During 1993 Norway produced 138.9 mtoe (million ton oil equivalents), of which 113.1 mtoe oil/natural gas liquids and 25.8 mtoe gas/condensate. The accumulated production since start-up in 1971 to December 1993 is 1273 into, of which approximately 79% is oil.

In accordance to NPDs resource account for the Norwegian continental shelf, the total petroleum resources, discovered and undiscovered, are estimated to be 10 btoe (billion toe), including the produced volumes. The discovered petroleum resources are estimated to 6.3 btoe, of which some 4.3 btoe are situated in producing fields and fields decided developed, The remaining 2 btoe are proved by drilling and comprises 13 fields declared commercial by the operators and 67 discoveries. These 80 fields and discoveries are still in the planning phase and will be the basis for development activities in Norway in the near future. No firm commitments to development concepts are made so far.

For the undiscovered resources the estimated statistical expectation is 3.7 btoe (risked with respect to probability of discovery). The undiscovered resources include predicted resources in mapped prospects, and also unmapped resources in areas where play models have been defined, but no prospects identified. For the discussion of the mapped prospects in this paper an average probability of discovery is set to 20% for the North Sea, and 12% for the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. The undiscovered resources are less mature and W-II form basis for field developments well beyond year 2000.

A complete resource account is provided in table 1. All numbers are in accordance to NPDs resource data base as per 31,12.1993, For the discussion of the future development activities on the Norwegian continental shelf the following petroleum resources are of special interest:

Discovered resources (2 btoe)Fields planned developed: 13Discoveries under evaluation :67

Undiscovered resources (3.7 btoe)Mapped prospects: 460 prospects (80 risked prospects)Unmapped resources:l 000-3000 expected prospects