An estimated $1 billion in contracts will be awarded now that a plan for enhancing the 200 million-barrel Snorre field is on the table, Norway’s Statoil said. The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate said Thursday that Statoil submitted a plan for an expansion of the Snorre in the North Sea. The regulator said Statoil’s program could increase the recovery rate from a field discovered in 1979 and considered one of the larger reservoirs on the Norwegian continental shelf from 46 percent to 51 percent. “The development plan is the result of dedicated work on the part of the companies and the authorities, an effort that has been ongoing for the past 12-15 years,” Arvid Østhus, an assistant development director for the NPD, […]