The rise in oil prices brought about the recovery of Norway’s oil industry, with companies lining up plans to invest in boosting oil production on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS)—surely most welcome news for Western Europe’s biggest oil and gas producer, which faces a decline from the mid-2020s onwards if new large discoveries are not made soon. Smaller oil firms, some of which are a result of recent mergers, plan to invest billions of dollars in Norway’s offshore oil and gas over the next five years, launching an unofficial race to see who will become the third-largest oil producer in Norway behind state-participated companies Equinor and Petoro, and the largest independent non-state-held company operating on the shelf. The three most likely candidates to become Norway’s top independent producer could be investing a combined US$20 billion offshore Norway by 2022, according to Bloomberg calculations. These companies are Aker BP, the […]