Insisting that oil in the giant Troll field should be developed has

Transcription

Insisting that oil in the
giant Troll field should be
developed has created
hundreds of billions of
kroner in added value.
A special report tells the tale.
A J O U R N A L F R O M T H E N O R W E G I A N P E T R O L EU M D I R E CTO R AT E
N O 2 - 2 012
2-2012 NORWEGIAN CONTINENTAL SHELF | 1
NORWEGIAN
CONTINENTAL
SHELF
A JOURNAL FROM THE
NORWEGIAN PETROLEUM
DIRECTORATE
NO 2 - 2012
12
4
Photo: Bjørn Rasen
30
34
VOLUME 9 - 2
RESPONSIBLE PUBLISHER
Norwegian Petroleum Directorate
P O Box 600
NO-4003 Stavanger
Norway
Telephone: +47 51 87 60 00
Telefax: +47 51 55 15 71
E-mail: [email protected]
CONTENTS
The interview: Taking the long view.............................. 4
Celebrating 40th anniversary............................................11
On the spot: Challenging achievement........................ 12
Science studies: Classroom caverns..............................28
There and back again.........................................................30
Rock shot: Getting down and dirty................................33
Going green............................................................................34
Disappointed on land..........................................................38
Shaken, but not stirred.......................................................43
Trying it all together.............................................................46
New way to get the facts...................................................48
EDITORIAL TEAM
Bjørn Rasen, editor
Bente Bergøy Miljeteig, journalist
Eldbjørg Vaage Melberg,
communications advisor
Rolf E Gooderham - English editor
PRODUCTION
Arne Bjørøen - graphic production
Printer: Gunnarshaug Trykkeri AS
Paper: Arctic Volume 200/130 g
Print run Norwegian: 9 000
Print run English: 2 000
LAYOUT/DESIGN
Art director Klas Jønsson
SUBSCRIPTIONS
[email protected]
Free of charge
NORWEGIAN CONTINENTAL
SHELF
on the web: www.npd.no
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER
www.twitter/oljedir
FRONT COVER
The NPD was created 40 years ago.
(Illustration: Emile Ashley)
2 | NORWEGIAN CONTINENTAL SHELF 2-2012
Mid-life crisis? No way!
Experience with the Norwegian model shows that dialogue
and objective arguments yield the best solutions overall.
“Life begins at 40,” they say –
either as a form of consolation or
because a 40-year-old knows how
to enjoy life. At the NPD, our aim
is another four decades of professional strength and playing a key
role.
When the Storting (parliament) voted to establish us 40
years ago, few people could have
predicted what followed – and
how long Norway’s oil adventure
would last. They’ve both almost
certainly exceeded every expectation. And it’s not over yet.
The latest White Paper on the
petroleum industry emphasised
a long-term perspective. Its main
points were an increased commitment to recovery from producing fields, bringing discoveries
on stream, exploration in familiar
regions and making provision
to open new areas. There’s a lot
to do, and we’ll have plenty of
meaningful assignments to fill our
working days.
Together with the Petroleum
Safety Authority Norway – our
former safety division, hived off
from us in 2004, and thereby an
important part of our history – we
work tirelessly to maximise the
value of the resources on the NCS
in a safe and environmentally
acceptable manner.
If we go back a decade, to our
30th anniversary, we were sharply
critical of the oil companies for
lacking a long-term view. Their
attention focused on short-term
projects and quick returns. We
saw insufficient willingness to collaborate across production licences and companies, which
calls for a little flexibility and patience. We’re still not satisfied.
Some jobs demand more patience than others. A case in point
is Troll. This giant North Sea field
guarantees long-term gas supplies to European customers, but
posed a problem in the form of a
“thin” oil layer which few people
felt was worth producing.
That oil created controversy
and confrontation. Today, 30
years later, the companies and
Norwegian society are still reaping
the rewards of an oil deposit
worth hundreds of billions of
kroner.
This issue recalls the history of
Troll and its oil to illustrate why all
opportunities must be thoroughly
studied before development work
begins.
Another case of much-increased
value creation is the decision to
inject water into the huge Ekofisk
reservoir further south on the
NCS. That has turned Norway’s
first producing oil field into
another adventure which will last
several more decades.
And even more examples
are to be found to show how
long-term thinking and planning
beyond the boundaries of a single
field boost the returns for everyone involved.
Norway’s success as an oil
nation has not been achieved by
the government compelling the
companies to adopt measures.
Experience with the “Norwegian
model” shows that dialogue and
objective arguments yield the
best solutions overall.
Since offshore operations
began on the NCS, legislation and
systems have also improved, so
that the companies themselves
must study all possible solutions
before plans for development and
operation are approved.
Almost 40 per cent of petroleum production on the NCS in
2030 is expected to derive from
discoveries yet to be made. And
how high will that output be 40
years from now? Norway will still
be producing from the North,
Norwegian and Barents Seas in
2050.
We will continue to play an
important role, so that our experience and knowledge can also
be applied to recovering these
resources to society’s benefit.
Bente Nyland
director general
THE INTERVIEW
NPD
Taking the long view
40
YEARS
NPD veteran Steinar Njå is convinced that the perspective
analyses are the most important documents the directorate
has ever produced. These looked 30 years ahead to provide
politicians and others with pointers to what might happen
on the NCS.
| Bjørn Rasen
Photos: Emile Ashley
I was called to an interview in Oslo during February 1973.
Bjartmar Gjerde, the then petroleum and energy minister, almost
jumped out of his chair over the
high resource estimates when he
saw the first perspective analysis
in the autumn of 1981.
Requirements for fabrication
capacity and engineers were
much higher than originally
expected. But when the background was explained to him, Mr
Gjerde grasped that he had acquired the management tool needed
to conduct an aggressive and
integrated national oil policy.
Mr Njå believes that the time
has now come to reveal that the
NPD employed a little trickery in
order to get its the new analyses
in front of the minister.
The bureaucrats at the
Ministry of Petroleum and Energy
(MPE) thought they had a good
enough overview, and were not
enthusiastic about the NPD’s idea
for perspective analyses. No need
to burden the minister with suchlike, they maintained
So Farouk Al-Kasim, the NPD’s
director of resource management,
proposed that the analysis be
submitted instead to the Ministry
of Local Government and Labour.
When the MPE’s mandarins
heard that the other ministry was
interested, they gave way at once
and awarded the NPD a hearing
with the minister.
Mr Gjerde understood the
value of the analyses, which
became a fixed part of the NPD’s
annual routine and were much
used when its staff spoke at the
opening or conclusion of various
conferences.
Systematise
The early beginnings of the
perspective analyses go back to
1978-79, when work began to
coordinate and systematise seismic data from various parts of the
NCS in order to produce updated
reports of the overall potential.
That work was initiated by
Hans Christen Rønnevik, an NPD
geologist who has gone on to
become well known as an exploration manager with a key role in
fields such as Kristin and Johan
Sverdrup. [See the interview in
NCS 1-2012 at www.npd.no.]
The Skånland commission on
the pace of NCS development in
the early 1980s was charged with
proposing measures to manage
offshore operations which optimised their social benefit.
This body needed more than
geological reports, and requested
a more overall assessment of the
likely level of future activities on
the NCS.
According to Mr Njå, it was
common practice at the time to
leave the preparation of such
scenarios and development trajectories to consultants. The result
was often reports which few
understood and even fewer learnt
anything from.
“Raised as I was on a farm, I
knew that you learn best from the
things you do yourself,” Mr Njå
observes. “And I was not alone
with that view in the NPD.
“So we set to work on our
own account, using Mr Rønnevik’s
overviews. Tore Bjordal, Odd
Raustein, Øystein Kristiansen and
myself were largely responsible
for the first analyses.”
Updated information on finds,
development solutions, steel
prices, water depths and wells
were used to outline what various
decisions could mean in terms of
investment, output and jobs.
These were key parameters
for the politicians, who wanted
the biggest possible value creation on the NCS while ensuring
that activity was not high enough
to damage the mainland economy.
A general feature was that
both activity and production turned
out to be much higher than Mr Njå
and his colleagues estimated in
their analyses. Yet the politicians
often claimed that the estimates
must be too high.
“In our initial analyses,
however, we also predicted that
investment on the NCS would
have ceased by 1998-99,” Mr Njå
also recalls.
The Christian Michelsen and
Sintef research institutes contributed to the work by developing
ever more advanced calculation
and analysis tools.
But the oil companies were
generally reluctant to release
what they regarded as “commercial secrets” when the NPD asked
them for information.
The exception was an American at Esso. During a visit to the
NPD, he was initially negative but
left behind a folder which contained all the necessary data.
Science
After a childhood divided between farm work, schooling and
outdoor activities, Mr Njå studied
sciences at high school in Bryne
south of Stavanger.
He wrote a project essay on
oil refineries, having accidently
come across a brochure on the
Esso facility at Slagentangen on
the Oslo Fjord.
So it was only natural that he
majored in chemistry at Bergen
technical college with subsequent
studies in chemical technology at
South Dakota School of Mines &
Technology in Rapid City, USA.
His first job as a chemical
engineer was to be responsible
for products on a ship manufacturing herring oil off Africa’s west
coast.
After a brief interlude selling
valves to the oil industry, he saw
that the recently created NPD
was advertising for people in late
1972.
“I was called to an interview in
Oslo the following February and
met Dag Meyer-Hansen. When
we went out for a beer together
afterwards, I understood that the
job was mine.
“That’s because Dag asked
me to pay for the drinks. He’d forgotten his wallet, and said he’d
pay me back when we met again
in Stavanger.”
Mr Njå joined the NPD on 25
May 1973 as employee number
27. After a trip to Malta to learn
about the oil business, his first job
on the NCS was to check metering systems aboard the Gulftide
production platform on Ekofisk.
A later assignment on the
same North Sea field was to check
reports of overflaring. Mr Njå
found that operator Phillips could
cut the amount flared by 25 per
cent with simple technical steps.
Finding ways to avoid unnecessary wastage of associated gas
through flaring was to develop
into one of his core jobs at the
NPD.
Role
Finding its own role in relation
not only to the petroleum industry but also to other government
agencies was important for the
new directorate during its early
years.
The fire and lifeboat accident
on Ekofisk Alpha in 1975, when
several people died, and the
Ekofisk Bravo blowout in 1977
contributed to the shaping of the
NPD’s early safety philosophy.
These incidents laid a foundation for the idea that a regulator
should not check everything the
companies did, but rather approve
the plans and safety systems they
created.
Many people participated in
the discussions and process of
maturing which ended up in the
Norwegian self-regulation principle.
This puts the onus on the
companies to document their
health, safety and environmental performance, secure official
approval and be responsible for
meeting the standards set.
”Magne Ognedal became
head of the production section of
the control department in 1976,”
recalls Njå. “I feel he played the
main role in getting self-regulation systematised and adopted.”
The Alexander L Kielland disaster in 1980, when 123 people died
because this flotel capsized, proved the great milestone in safety
work on the NCS.
During the Bravo blowout, Mr
Njå was one of the first to arrive
at the Tanager operations centre
outside Stavanger. He was followed by government ministers
and the world’s press.
“Most people presented this
incident as a great environmental
disaster,” he notes. “It was a little
odd to discover afterwards that
most of the oil evaporated and
that the blowout in practice caused no demonstrable negative
effects of any significance.”
Perspective analyses were important for the NPD in the 1980s, and were
carried out by multidisciplinary teams. The people behind the very first
analysis were (from left) Steinar Njå, Jan Riddervold, Odd-Erik Hansgaard,
resource management director Farouk Al-Kasim, Steinar Marøy, Hans Christen
Rønnevik, Øystein Kristiansen and Per Tønnesen. (Photo: NPD archive)
Underestimated
Mr Njå believes that the role played by many of his NPD colleagues
in Norwegian oil history has been
underestimated, and cites Sigurd
Heiberg as an example.
He sounded the alarm about
seabed subsidence on Ekofisk
without winning much attention,
and played a key role in getting
the companies to adopt gas injection for improving recovery.
Together with Tor Lund, Mr
Heiberg also took the initiative
on the Kalk project – the first
research programme where the
NPD and research institutes collaborated directly with the oil
companies.
The goal was to improve recovery from chalk reservoirs on the
Danish continental shelf and from
the Ekofisk and Valhall fields on
the NCS.
“We also had a good collaboration with the British, not least
where reporting was concerned,”
says Mr Njå. “They’d developed
their own production reporting
system (PPRS), which we were
allowed to copy.
“Later, we were invited to participate in an improved oil recovery (IOR) programme they’d set
up for their own oil fields, since
we were running a similar project
in Norway.”
That provided the background for establishing a new
programme for IOR and reservoir
technology in Norway, known
as Spor from the initials of its
Norwegian name.
Mr Njå personally chaired the
executive committee for this programme, and the NPD received
NOK 100 million for five years to
establish and execute Spor.
Pursued in collaboration
with Rogaland Research, Sintef,
the Continental Shelf Institute
(IKU) and the Institute for Energy
Technology (IKU), work concentrated on water and gas injection
for IOR and on achieving better
reservoir understanding.
Results from some of its studies were applied on the Ekofisk
field as the basis for the major
waterflooding project pursued
there.
The Spor programme was
ably headed by Anna Inger Eide
from the NPD, Mr Njå says, and
its findings eventually attracted
international attention.
Recovery
The NPD made it clear at an early
stage that recovery from the huge
Ekofisk area should be substantially higher than the first estimates
of 17-19 per cent of the oil originally in place.
Everyone agreed that pressure 2-2012 NORWEGIAN CONTINENTAL SHELF | 7
As everyone knows, the outcome of this waterflooding
proved surprisingly good.
support was the answer, but disagreement prevailed initially on
whether this should be provided
by natural gas, nitrogen or air.
Water was out of the question
at first because experience from
the nearby Valhall field showed
that it converted this chalk reservoir into an impermeable, toothpaste-like substance.
When it became clear that
Valhall and Ekofisk chalk have differing porosities, however, Phillips
tested water injection in the USA
and found it appeared to have a
good effect.
Despite these encouraging
results, the company was not
immediately ready to take the
risk of full-scale water injection
when it was not certain about the
outcome.
Phillips wanted compensation for the risk, and the NPD was
asked to assess the economics
of the project. The outcome was
that the licensees were given
more favourable depreciation
rules.
While that allowed water
injection to be realised, the
Ekofisk partners had to accept
that state-owned Statoil acquired
a small stake in the licence and
took its share of the risk.
“As everyone knows, the
outcome of this waterflooding
proved surprisingly good,” says
Mr Njå. “Although the companies
sang to some extent from the
same hymn sheet, I’d argue that
water injection would never have
happened without our purposeful
commitment to IOR virtually from
the word go.”
Another colleague he wants
to praise is Kjell Reidar Knutsen.
“The work he and his colleagues
have done over the years to
streamline reporting from the
companies, define concepts,
systematise the information and
use it to build up our database is
greatly undervalued.”
The MPE, Statistics Norway
and other agencies all now benefit from this database, which is
also used as a model by a growing
number of oil producers when
creating such facilities.
“I’ve personally followed this
work closely in Nigeria, and know
what a high priority is assigned to
it,” observes Mr Njå.
Flaring
He has worked a great deal on
IOR and flaring, both nationally
and internationally. The NPD has
been very restrictive from a early
stage in permitting gas to be flared on the NCS.
When Statfjord was due to
come on stream in November
1979, the equipment for injecting
gas had not been installed.
Operator Mobil applied for a permit to flare the gas until injection
could begin.
The outcome was that the
flaring was permitted, but only
on condition that oil production
was halved to restrict the amount
burnt off.
That represented a dramatic cut in cash flow. Mobil then
managed to find the necessary
injection gear in the USA and hurriedly air-freighted it to Norway.
As compensation for this drastic and expensive operation, the
licensees were allowed to write
down the additional costs in the
same year the equipment became
operational – a solution both
sides regarded as a win-win.
Russia
Mr Njå was contacted in 1993 by
Øystein Berg, head of the Petrad
development assistance agency,
which had been charged with helping Russia to enter the
modern oil world.
The Soviet Union had been
dissolved two years earlier, and
the Russians now had to learn
western ways of doing things – in
part with aid from foreign investors.
This marked the start of a
long and interesting period when
Mr Njå worked on improving
Russia’s resource management
system, particularly within organisation and economic assessments.
He maintains that the NPD
represented a good model for
the new and modern petroleum administration required by
Norway’s giant neighbour to the
east.
Frequent visits mean that he
is now very familiar with both
federal and regional governments
in Russia. His travels have covered
most of its regions.
“Getting to know the Russians
better was incredibly interesting,”
he reports. “Like most other Norwegians, I imagined that they had
their own – and different – ways
of thinking.
“That’s just nonsense.
Russians are even greater individualists than us Norwegians. If
any general differences exist, they
derive from the Soviet era.
“That was a time when most
people largely did only what they
were told. Such passivity gave a
few active leaders pretty well free
hands.”
Fortunately, the trend today
is that the decentralised specialist
teams in Russia’s oil and gas
sector no longer hold back, but
contribute their experience to
Moscow.
“That’s where the decisions
are taken. So we see that our
contribution is worthwhile, which
makes our work in Russia particularly meaningful,” says Mr Njå.
In his view, the Norwegians
have things to learn from Russia
about the theoretical approach
to oil and gas – particularly when
learning what is happening in the
reservoirs.
Nigeria
He has also devoted a lot of
time to putting in place a better
Steinar Njå is proud of working for society as a whole. He has been with the NPD for 39 of the directorate’s 40 years.
Celebrating 40th anniversary
Sometimes, however, I feel we should ask ourselves
whether we are being too friendly.
The NPD was created on 14 June 1972 by a vote in the Storting (parliament).
It has had three directors general since its foundation – starting with
Lessons. Steinar Njå has witnessed great
international interest in the Norwegian model.
regime for oil administration in
Nigeria, where corruption is one
of the biggest challenges.
Former Norwegian premier
Kjell Magne Bondevik took advantage of Nigeria’s democratisation
process around 1999-2000 to
launch an oil-related collaboration between the two countries.
The Nigerian government is
interested in collaborating with
Norway in order to draw on its
experience of both resource
management and safety supervision.
Natural gas corresponding
to twice Norway’s exports of this
commodity is flared worldwide
every year. This wasted resource
could be worth NOK 150 billion.
Nigeria and Russia account
for the biggest volumes, and also
have the greatest potential both
for making better alternative use
of the gas flared and for pursuing
IOR.
According to Mr Njå, Norwegian experience from its own
continental shelf could be of very
great importance in these areas.
Norway participates in the
work of the global gas flaring
reduction (GGFR) initiative by the
World Bank to create a programme
in each country.
These are then followed up
with knowledge transfer and analyses between the participants,
who include the USA, Canada,
Nigeria, Iraq, Indonesia and
Mexico as well as Norway.
Oil companies Chevron, Shell,
Exxon, Eni, Total and Statoil are
also contributing expertise, while
the NPD is drawn in as required to
assist government agencies in the
other countries.
The work also benefits from
the support of the Sustainable
Energy for All venture initiated
by UN secretary-general Ban
Ki-moon.
This aims to introduce energysaving programmes in poor countries and to build infrastructure
and transmission lines in areas
without an electricity supply.
“The more I travel around
the world, the more I understand
the importance of international
collaboration on climate and environmental measures in the petroleum sector,” says Mr Njå.
“To quote my colleague Else
Ormaasen: ‘collaboration with
other countries is part of our
international responsibility’.”
geologist Fredrik Hagemann. He was succeeded by ex-politician Gunnar Berge
After the split, of course, we’ve
learnt to live with the reality before another geologist, Bente Nyland, took over.
without weakening either resource
management or safety supervision.”
In his view, the NPD took a
tougher line with the companies in many cases after its initial
apprenticeship. But he also sees
that the trend has been towards OD revolusjonerte sikkerheten
FREDRIK HAGEMANN MENER DIREKTORATET
more detailed development
BLIR OVERSETT I OLJEHISTORIEN
plans, agreements and regulations.
-Det som er litt leit, sier Fredrik Hagemann og bruker et sekund eller to for å
All the parties must relate
formulere budskapet han nå skal framføre. Oljedirektoratets sjef gjennom de
første 24 årene bruker aldri sterke ord eller dramatiske virkemidler. Men når
professionally to these. “It’s clear han nå skal oppsummere sin tid i OD og fortelle om noe som er ”litt leit”, er det
all mulig grunn til å lytte. Krassere enn det kommer han neppe til å bli sitert.
that the traditional approach,
which prefers collaboration with
the companies to confrontation,
yields rich rewards.
“Sometimes, however, I feel
we should ask ourselves whether
we are being too friendly,
whether the demands we make
are tough enough.
“I can’t point to any specific
recent examples, but believe on
a general basis that it can be constructive to ask such questions
from time to time.”
Now 68, Mr Njå envisages
Fredrik Hagemann
another year with the NPD before
retiring. He never moved over to
the industry because the directorate always offered him very interesting assignments.
“No other employer could
have offered such projects. This
has never been about money for
me, but about the professional
SOM NYANSATT OLJEDIREKTØR FOR FIRE ÅR SIDEN HADDE BENTE
perspectives, the opportunity to
NYLAND ENKELTE GANGER FØLELSEN AV Å VÆRE DEN SISTE I REKKEN.
BRANSJEN VAR FOR NEDADGÅENDE, OG PESSIMISMEN RÅDET.
work on the overall picture.
Gunnar Berge
“I’ve also appreciated all the
good colleagues and collaboration internally. But the most
- Nå opplever vi en enorm optimisme der alle vil være med og lete. Selskap som har
forlatt norsk sokkel kommer tilbake, og de som ikke gjør funn, satser friskt videre.
powerful driving force has been
Utviklingen er selvfølgelig gledelig, men sier også sitt om en bransje der
selskapene har lett for å springe etter hverandre.
the knowledge that I’m working
for society.
“If I do a good job, the results
aren’t confined to increased profits for my employer. The value I
help to create benefits the whole
nation.
“Internationally, my colleagues and I find that a growing
number of oil-producing countries want to copy the NPD. That’s
the best evidence of our success.”
AV ARNT EVEN BØE
OLJEDIREKTØRENE
AV ARNT EVEN BØE
-Det som er litt leit, synes jeg, er at Oljedirektoratets mange positive bidrag ikke blir
nevnt når oljehistorien skrives og fortelles.
Typisk i så måte var den ellers så utmerkede serien om norsk oljehistorie som gikk
på NRK. Der var det mye interessant, ikke
minst om Statoil, men ikke ett ord om Oljedirektoratet som jeg vil påstå spilte en minst
like viktig rolle i disse første årene,
sier Hagemann.
Selvfølgelig ble det i serien fokusert på
ulykkene og de negative sidene ved ”oljå”,
skulle bare mangle. ”Alexander Kielland”havariet i 1980, da 123 mennesker mistet
tragiske hendelser som aldri vil eller skal gå i
glemmeboken. Begge bidro til økt forståelse
for at sikkerheten må gå foran alt, i vissheten
om at selv det utenkelige kan skje. Men
Fredrik Hagemann ønsker en mer balansert
framstilling av historien.
-Faktum er at oljebransjen, med Oljedirektoratet i spissen, har revolusjonert sikmen for alle som ferdes på havet. Før platt-
mye farligere arbeidsplass enn nå. Det beste
Changed
When Mr Njå looks back on
almost 40 years with the NPD, he
observes that much has changed
since the early years.
“We used to take the initiative
and get things going ourselves a
lot more. Former director general
Fredrik Hagemann was good at
supporting such moves.
“This ‘entrepreneurial spirit’
obviously reflected the fact that
we were sailing unfamiliar seas.
Now and then, I miss that sense of
get-up-and-go where we challenged the MPE more.”
He has also seen the NPD’s
role change over the years.
Responsibility for the environment now lies largely with the
Norwegian Climate and Pollution
Agency (Klif) and for safety with
the Petroleum Safety Authority
Norway (PSA).
“Personally, I feel that separating out the PSA to create an
independent agency is the move
which has weakened the NPD
most,” Mr Njå observes.
“As a single agency, we made
better use of human resources
and stood stronger externally.
18
standbyskip og –helikoptere, medvirket til
kvantesprang på sikkerhetsområdet.
FØRST UTE
nivået også der betraktelig. OD og norsk
sokkel var også historisk tidlig ute med det
såkalte egenkontroll-prinsippet. Det går ut
på at myndighetene ikke kan eller skal kontrollere skruer eller muttere, men overlate
til operatørselskapene å dokumentere at sikkerhetsoppleggene og -rutinene er i samsvar
med våre krav. Dette prinsippet var OD først
med i Norge, og nå brer det seg over kloden.
At dette ikke er interessant når historien skal
fortelles, er litt leit, synes jeg.
Fortsatt uten å slå i bordet forteller
Hagemann oppgitt om alle dem som er opptatt av å problematisere og mistenkeliggjøre
oljenæringen. For eksempel da han en gang,
som redaksjonell konsulent for et bokverk
om oljevirksomheten, ble forelagt en teori
som gikk ut på at oljeselskapene med overlegg startet med å bore 33 tørre brønner
på norsk sokkel: De ville presse fram bedre
rammebetingelser for fortsettelsen. Litt leit,
det og.
Fredrik Hagemann er ikke så alvorlig
som han kan høres ut, så langt. Han ler mye
og skyter stadig inn anekdoter og historier
”som ikke egner seg på trykk”. Som i oljås
mot de seismiske undersøkelsene som de
jo helt rett i, medgir Hagemann i dag. –Vi
brukte jo dynamitt. Men det hjalp godt da vi
startet med opprydding på havbunnen fordi
trålerne klagde på at oljeskrot ødela for dem.
Mesteparten av det vi fant viste seg å være
vi tilbød dem å kjøpe tilbake utstyret for en
billig penge. Det gjorde de med stor glede,
siden de allerede hadde fått erstatning for
utstyret.
Lofot
bli e
ANSATT NUMMER 3
Da Fredrik Hagemann ble utnevnt til Oljedirektoratets første sjef i 1972, kom han fra
Industridepartementets Oljekontor, arne-
lige oljepionerer. Stavanger kjente han godt
etter oppveksten som sønn av kommunelegen på Jørpeland. Heller ikke de to som
var ansatte før ham, var ukjente. Sekretær
Brynhild Meltveit kom også fra Jørpeland.
Selv om hun lå i barnevogn da Fredrik dro
til Stavanger for å ta artium på Kongsgaard,
GUNNAR BER
MOT OLJEB
- Når jeg ser tilbake p
vi vært enda flinker
Skulle disse områden
aktiviteten i Norskeh
svært uheldig
OLJEDIREKTORATET4OÅR
AV ARNT EVEN BØE
Gunnar Berge tenker tilbake til valg
1997 da Hydro forberedte den første
i Nordland VI. Området var åpnet o
tildelt. Hydros brønn skulle bli den
men plutselig gikk alarmen. Oljebor
utenfor Lofoten ble framstilt som ha
miljøprotestene ble så høylytte at po
fryktet de skulle influere valget. Som
i Oljedirektoratet var Gunnar Berge
dem som snakket med Hydro og fik
skapet til å avlyse den omstridte bor
-Bore-retretten la seg etter hver
skjebnesvanger klam hånd over akti
planene i området. Til slutt ble Nord
stengt for oljeleting. Hendelsen var
til dagens debatt om ja eller nei til o
utenfor Lofoten og Vesterålen. For m
dette en underlig problemstilling ett
enn 40 års læretid lenger sør og nor
OLJEDIREKTØRENE
-Det var jeg som
skulle slukke lyset
Gunnar Berge er en friluftsmann som trives like godt med ski som med joggesko på beina. Her er han på søndagstur på Tungenes nord for Stavanger.
Foto : Emile Ashley
12
Oljedirektøren synes det er enkelt å
forholde seg til olje- og energiministeren:
-Ola Borten Moe er en tydelig olje- og
energiminister. De signalene han sender,
representerer Regjeringens forventinger til
industrien som dermed vet hva den skal
forholde seg til. Og det gleder meg at han
er så opptatt av økt utvinning. Slik framstår
statsråden som en av de beste pådriverne
vi har når det gjelder å få mest mulig ut av
de gamle oljefeltene, sier oljedirektør Bente
Nyland.
Hun mener Sp-statsråden langt klarere
seg som en minister for petroleumssektoren. Han formilder innholdet i Petroleums-Meldingen viser at Regjeringen vil noe med
næringen, setter framtidsperspektiver og
beskriver hvorledes nasjonen skal nå målene,
sier oljedirektøren og oppsummerer bud•
•
•
Bente Nyland har i jubileumsåret 2012 styrt Oljedirektoratet i fem år. Foto: Emile Ashley
4
OLJEDIREKTØRENE
Bente Nyland
Sterkere satsing på økt utvinning.
Flest mulig nye funn i produksjon.
Intensivert leting i eksisterende
områder for å ta hånd om tidskritiske
ressurser.
•
Tilrettelegging for åpning av nye
områder for oljeleting.
–For Oljedirektoratet som etat er det
viktig å sikre at Petroleumsmeldingens
ambisjoner gjennomsyrer vårt budskap og
handlemåte. Jeg har merket meg at denne
meldingen i tillegg til økt utvinning også
betoner tilrettelegging av nye områder
sterkere enn i tidligere, sier Nyland som
minner om at dypt vann i Norskehavet var
det siste nye området som ble åpnet for leting. Det var i 1994. Samtidig ble Nordland
VI åpnet for leting og blokker tildelt. Men
området ble som kjent stengt igjen – og er
det fortsatt. Det som skjedde på Nordland VI
er en påminnelse om hvor vanskelig det kan
være å følge opp politiske beslutninger i det
virkelige liv, sier hun.
-Har de nye store funnene, som Johan
Sverdrup, endret det norske oljeperspektivet?
sialet for uoppdagede ressurser i Nordsjøen
og er den viktigste årsaken til at vi trolig
kommer til å oppjusterer estimatet vårt for
uoppdagede ressurser i Nordsjøen. Funnet
aldri skal si aldri. Vi har visst om at det var et
prospekt der lenge, men det ble vurdert til å
ha lav funnsannsynlighet fordi vi ikke kunne
skjønne hvordan olje skulle kunne migrere
inn i området. Når det til sist ble gjort et så
stort funn, skyldes det både nye brønner
og ny seismikk som avslørte at oljen hadde
regelen.
-Jeg vil minne om at den aktuelle blok-
ganger. Når det ender med funn, er det en ny
erte områder fungerer etter forutsetningene.
Det betyr at vi ikke kan utelukke liknende
hendelser på andre deler av sokkelen.
-Mange peker på det rekordhøye investeringsnivået i ”oljå” og frykter overoppheting.
Er tiden inne til å sette bremsene på?
-Diskusjonen om styring av aktiviteten
og køordninger for utbygginger er ikke ny.
De forsøkene som er gjort på å bremse, har
ikke virket etter hensikten. En kan kanskje
det samme samtidig. Akkurat nå er aktiviteten svært høy på grunn av høye oljepriser.
Et raskt og dramatisk fall i oljeprisen kan fort
endre på det. Da kan de negative konsekvensene forsterkes av iverksatte bremsetiltak.
Det er ikke mer enn 10 år siden vi alle var
bekymret for sterkt fallende aktivitet på sokkelen. Etter mitt syn er det feil signal å endre
rammebetingelsene i perioder med høyt
aktivitetsnivå. Men det er viktig å følge med
på at vedtatte planer blir fulgt og at budsjetklarer å holde den forventede kvaliteten,
og at oljeselskapene sikrer seg tilstrekkelig
kompetanse.
OD legger seg ikke oppi selskapenes
optimisme eller pessimisme, men direktoratet er svært nøye når det vurderer realismen
5
ON THE SPOT
NPD
Challenging
achievement
Producing the oil in Troll is one
of the greatest technological,
resource management and
value creation successes on
the NCS. The NPD played
and continues to play
a crucial role in this saga.
| Arnt Even Bøe
Illustrations: Klas Jønsson
The oil reserves in Troll have
turned this huge gas field in the
North Sea into the giant of the
NCS, bigger than next largest
discoveries – Ekofisk and Statfjord
– put together.
Its story began in August
1979, when Borgny Dolphin drilled
into a geological formation long
known to the geologists as a big
“flat spot” which might contain
much oil, gas or both.
Although this structure was
by no means unknown, most oil
companies found a water depth
of 300-350 metres offputting at
the time. Not so Shell.
The latter became operator
of block 31/2, with 35 per cent, in
Norway’s fourth licensing round
in 1978. Statoil had 50 per cent,
while Conoco, Superior Oil and
Norsk Hydro got five per cent
each.
This bold commitment reaped
a quick reward, and the NPD
issued a press release as early as
5 September that year which confirmed the discovery of “a gas field
with substantial reserves”.
All the signs were that the
discovery also extended into the
neighbouring 31/3, 31/5 and 31/6
blocks “with considerable resources
there as well”.
The partnership could eventually report that it had made
“a world-class gas discovery”,
perhaps 10 times larger than the
now-depleted Frigg field in the
North Sea.
Few people, if any, reckoned
at the time that the thin, virtually
inaccessible oil layers beneath the
gas would also make Troll one of
the North Sea’s biggest oil fields.
But that has been the outcome of tough negotiations both
inside and outside the licence
group. A stubborn NPD secured
Norway huge revenues from Troll
oil.
40
YEARS
Achievement
This ranks as one of the agency’s
biggest achievements in its
40-year history, accomplished
at a time when all attention was
focused on the field’s gas resources.
Troll was discovered during
the Cold War in a Europe hungry
for more “friendly” energy sources.
The prospect of Russian gas
exports expanding created great
concern in the West.
This was nowhere greater than
in the USA, and president Ronald
Reagan strove to ensure that Troll
came on stream as fast as possible
to reduce European dependence
on Communist energy.
But Reagan’s urgent promptings fell on deaf ears in a Norwegian government which
quickly grasped that it would take
much time and effort to plan the
development of this huge discovery.
Shell, which had initially
dubbed the find Kamskjell
(Scallop), submitted the first plans
in the early 1980s for bringing it
on stream as quickly as possible.
These proposals paid scant
regard to the oil, which was considered unprofitable to produce
– mainly because the strata in
which it lay were so thin.
According to the licensees,
new drilling technology would
have to be developed to recover
any substantial volume of this
crude. And they had no time to
wait for that to happen if the gas
was to be speedily positioned in
the market.
The NPD saw that Troll’s size
meant it could serve as a guarantor which would allow associated
gas in other oil fields and smaller
Norwegian gas discoveries to be
developed.
But the agency was much
readier to adopt a waiting attitude on the Troll oil than Shell
and the other partners because
the extent of the reservoir meant
the resources could be substantial.
Without the NPD’s demand for unitisation, Shell would have
started production on its own terms and the crude would have
been lost for ever. (Ole Svein Krakstad)
Team
The upshot was that the oil zones
had to be mapped. This prompted
the NPD to take the innovative
step of establishing a special
cross-disciplinary team in 1981-82
to monitor Troll.
Farouk Al-Kasim, the director of resource management,
appointed principal engineer Ole
Svein Krakstad to lead this body
and report directly to him.
Mr Krakstad was given a free
hand to recruit the specialists he
thought best suited to serve on
the team. They were intended to
cover the whole value chain from
geophysics to economics.
A reservoir engineer himself,
Mr Krakstad began in the autumn
of 1981 to simulate the behaviour of the Troll formation – first
vertically, then horizontally – as
revealed by drilling.
More people became involved
during 1982, and the whole
operation moved at the end of
the year into a former carpet shop
on the ground floor of the NPD’s
then offices in Stavanger.
Team members in this early
phase included geophysicist Svein
Johnsen, assistant geophysicist
Jan Allen Eide, and geologists
Magne Edvardsen, Øyvind Lønne
and Kjetil Tonstad.
Torfinn Karlsen and Terje Åsen
were the experts on reservoir
technology, Tore Bjordal specialised in field development, and
Billy Bærning and Olav Fjellså
dealt with the economics.
The team received help from
a number of NPD specialists. Hans
Christian Rønnevik and Sigurd
Heiberg, for instance, supported
early geological interpretation
and reservoir work respectively.
External studies were also
conducted by Rogaland Research
and Franlab in France on reservoir
simulation and by the latter on
calculating pressure loss in pipelines.
Robertson Research in the UK
investigated the geological conditions, while assessments were
made of various development
concepts.
It was important to avoid
the fate of Frigg, the biggest
Norwegian gas find before Troll,
which had also contained oil in
even thicker layers than in parts
of the new discovery.
Measuring seven to 10 metres
in height, these strata made Frigg
a substantial oil field. But the
technology to recover this crude
was not available when it came
on stream in 1977.
It would have been necessary to drill several hundred
production wells to get out these
resources, which were lost once
gas production reduced reservoir
pressure.
The job for the NPD’s team
was to identify the opportunities
– both existing or potential – for
recovering the Troll oil, which ran
to several billion barrels.
From day one, the agency’s
oil ambitions ran into opposition
from the licensees. They regarded
the crude at best as a pure byproduct which could delay gas
sales.
The companies took the view
that early gas production was no
problem, and wanted the NPD to
document its claim that such output would damage the prospects
for oil recovery.
Allocated
Troll’s gas resources extended
far into the neighbouring blocks
to the east, which had not been
allocated. That prompted great
interest among most of the oil
companies.
At that time, it was still
both legal and normal for the
Norwegian government to give
preference to the three domestic
oil companies created during
Norway’s short career as an oil
nation.
So nobody was surprised
when the Labour government
proposed awarding the three
neighbouring blocks on the same
pattern adopted for the Gullfaks
field.
This meant that wholly stateowned Statoil received 85 per
cent and the operatorship, part
state-owned Hydro nine per
cent and privately owned Saga
Petroleum six per cent.
Labour had originally wanted
to give Statoil 100 per cent after
Arve Johnsen, the company’s
chief executive, pointed out
Troll’s strategic importance for
Norwegian gas sales.
But the party appreciated that
this would be politically impossible, and the Conservative government which took over after the
1981 general election withdrew
its predecessor’s proposals.
Statoil feared that its operator position would be weakened,
and launched a vigorous lobbying campaign. In 1982, the
Conservatives approved the division of interests but decided that
Hydro would also have an operator responsibility.
The failure of the minority
government to give a better deal
to Saga aroused the ire of the
other non-socialist parties in the
Storting (parliament).
After much political in-fighting, Saga also secured an operator role. The award of the three
additional Troll blocks was unanimously approved by the Storting’s
industry committee in 1983.
Shell had submitted an early
application for the three unallocated blocks, but failed even to
receive an acknowledgement
from the Ministry of Petroleum
and Energy (MPE).
While stressing that the return
was low, Shell declared “its” Troll
block to be commercial on 15
November 1983 and continued to
press for gas production to begin
as soon as possible.
Sources
Five people have been the principal sources for this presentation
of the NPD’s role in the story of
Troll oil, including Mr Krakstad.
He was closely involved until his
departure in 1985.
Mr Bjordal then took over and
led the team until 2003. Joining in
2000, Leif Hinderaker eventually
became its coordinator. That job is
held today by Torgunn Kvervavik
Sheridan.
Finally, Tomas Mørch became
the NPD’s area director for the
northern North Sea – including
Troll – in 2010.
The confrontations between
the agency and the companies
related in virtually every case to
the development of the “Shell”
block on the western side of the
field.
That contained a third of the
gas and virtually all the recoverable oil. The NPD’s dilemma was
that the more gas output it permitted in this area, the harder oil
extraction would become.
A test well in the thin oil zone
during 1980 confirmed that it was
possible to recover these resources, and optimism was boosted by
a second test well in the thicker
layers the following year.
Despite these results, Shell
remained eager to start producing the gas. It eventually moved
close to the NPD’s position by saying it could produce oil and gas
simultaneously from a platform
in the west, but crude could only
come from the thickest zones.
That was not good enough
for the Troll team, which took the
view that the reservoir formations
in east and west were probably in
communication.
The MPE followed the discussions closely, and eventually provided NOK 5 million in extra funds
for reservoir studies.
Intended to document that
gas output on the western flank
would hit oil production, this
appropriation was spent on external studies focused primarily on
reservoir simulation.
The NPD contributed its own
personnel and funds to the work,
and its Troll team expanded to 12
members. This expenditure indicates how seriously the government regarded the issue.
Status
All four operators – Shell, Statoil,
Hydro and Saga – were asked by
the NPD in June 1984 to provide a
status report and to outline their
future plans for the oil in both
thick and thin layers.
Shell responded that producing the oil in the thin strata would
be unprofitable, and valued the
resources in the thicker zones at
little better than zero.
Indeed, it maintained that gas
production itself would only just
be commercial and stuck to its
plans for such output from the
western block.
The oil in this part of the field
was seen as merely a by-product
which could be recovered with
the aid of a few vertical wells –
even though it not would be profitable.
However, the Troll team concluded that Shell’s strategy for
getting on stream had failed to
give adequate weight to the value
of the oil.
According to the NPD, the
company’s refusal to consider
horizontal drilling meant that 700
wells would be required to do
justice to the oil by conventional
criteria.
This was naturally out of the
question. The best management
of the field’s resources could only
be achieved by treating both
western and eastern sections as a
whole.
That in turn meant a development which not only brought the
eastern gas quickly on stream
but also optimised resource use
in the west. Horizontal drilling in
both oil zones was then the only
answer.
Saga pointed in its assessment
to the difficulties of hitting the
producing zones, and concluded
that the oil was uninteresting. The
same held true for expected technology progress up to 2000, and
the company also rejected test
output.
Hydro pointed to low rates of
production and also failed to see
any profit in the oil at that time.
But it was more hopeful of technology development and felt the
crude could have some promise.
Unlike the other three, Statoil
concluded that the oil in the thin
layers could be profitable but that
the rate of return would be well
below its normal requirements for
such a project.
The state company maintained a low profile in the partnership, despite its cautious optimism. According to one source, it
had to be loyal to the rest of the
group – and silently shared its
view – while expressing understanding for the government’s
requirements.
Although none of the four
were directly hungry for the oil,
the conclusion was that Statoil
and Hydro were the relevant
operator candidates for an oil
development on Troll.
An NPD review of the documentation used by the four found
they had assumed a very low oil
output. Unlike the Troll team, they
had no faith in horizontal drilling
as a solution.
The companies noted that
developing the necessary technology would demand both time
and resources, which could delay
gas sales and weaken their fight
for a share of a seller’s market.
High risk was another problem.
Drain
One of the arguments against
horizontal drilling was the
assumption that long production
wells would drain inward in the
reservoir from their entry point.
Pressure would thereby be
lower at the start of the well,
which might accordingly collapse
before production had got going
properly.
Assessments commissioned
by Mr Krakstad found that
increasing the size of liner perforations into the well would keep
the pressure constant at all times.
As a consequence of these
simulations, the collapse theory
could be eliminated and it was
possible to assume higher production figures.
Shell and Statoil also presented calculations which showed
that sand and gravel in the oil
zones were so unconsolidated
that it would be impossible to
guide the bit horizontally.
The maximum acceptable
deviation from the vertical was
put at 45 degrees – at 60 degrees,
the whole well would collapse
when the bit was withdrawn.
Mr Bjordal could then point
to a classic drilling case – a well
driven vertically from an artificial
island in the USA, which ended up
in unconsolidated sand on land
instead of the reservoir.
He could also utilise his
knowledge of rock mechanics to
show that horizontal drilling did
not cause critical stresses in the
reservoir.
Backed by scientific studies
from mining specialists in
Trondheim, too, Mr Heiberg
demonstrated that careful drilling
in unconsolidated sand did not
necessarily lead to collapse.
The argument about unprofitability was countered with
simulation results obtained by
Mr Krakstad via Franlab, which
showed that horizontal wells
could increase output more than
fivefold.
In retrospect, Mr Bjordal
observes: “The oil industry has
repeatedly demonstrated that it
isn’t the most scientific in history”.
The NPD also viewed with
growing concern what it regarded
as four parallel races to develop
a single field. All the operators
secured voluminous studies
which demonstrated how they
would tackle the job independently.
Mr Bjordal retained all these
documents, and quickly acquired
a reputation for possessing the
NPD’s untidiest and most overfilled office.
Eventually, the Troll team saw
that many of the studies and
reports came from the same consultancies and were fairly similar.
The biggest difference was the
name of the client.
The NPD found such duplication meaningless, and also worried that the four operators would
each spend large sums on studies
which failed to take account of
integrated resource management.
It felt a block-by-block
approach by different operators
was definitely the worst-case
scenario. The clear goal was to
base development on an overall
assessment of the resources.
The oil industry has repeatedly demonstrated that it isn’t
the most scientific in history. (Tore Bjordal)
Basis
The question was where the NPD
could find a basis for achieving
this ambition at a time when
Norway’s Petroleum Activities Act
had yet to be passed.
Krakstad found the answer
in the provisional regulations for
acceptable exploitation of petroleum resources. Section 1 stated
clearly that the government could
demand unitisation of fields
across several blocks if the aquifer
was in communication.
Such contact would mean that
production in one place might
have consequences in another,
and provided the legal foundation
for the NPD to act.
This was enshrined in an
almost historic letter sent to the
operators on 9 February 1984,
which ordered them to unitise the
four blocks.
The NPD declared that the
main structures in production
licences 054 and 085 were in pressure communication, and the field
was therefore to be regarded as a
single reservoir.
Development of both structures had to take account of that,
and the four Troll blocks were
to be merged into a single unit
where each licensee’s holding
reflected their share of the total.
“This letter was one of the
most important single incidents in
the fight over Troll oil,” Mr Krakstad
says today. “Without it, Shell
would have started production
on its own terms and the crude
would have been lost for ever.”
Unitisation was a reality by
the autumn of 1985. To avoid the
companies opting for cheap and
short-term solutions, the duration of the unitised licence was
extended from 2015/2019 to
2030.
This was an official response
to fears among the licensees that
much of the gas would remain
unproduced when the licences
expired, and also aimed to reduce
their impatience over the oil.
Many problems were solved
by unitising the field, but others
were created because the discovery actually comprised two sections – Troll West and Troll East.
Both had underlying oil, but
everyone agreed that the zones
in the east were too thin. No purpose would be served trying to
recover crude from columns no
thicker than four metres.
A very different position prevailed in Troll West. This part of the
field was again split into two – the
gas province and the oil province.
The first of these contained a
third of all the gas as well as quite
a lot of oil. This lay in thicker layers
than to the east, but these were
still no more than 13-14 metres
high.
At the same time, the crude
zones in the gas province were
much more extensive than in the
oil province – which also held far
smaller resources.
The relatively thin oil layers
in the gas province could not
be written off, of course, but the
first steps nevertheless had to be
taken in the oil province. This held
relatively little gas, and its crude
was in columns 22-27 metres
thick.
Oil in place in Troll West
totalled more than 3.6 billion barrels (570 million cubic metres) – a
formidable volume which the NPD
was unwilling to write off without
a fight.
How much of this was recoverable, and at what cost, remained
the key questions.
Horizontal
Only one solution was available
for producing Troll oil, the NPD
believed – long horizontal wells.
But the companies continued to
deny that the technology was sufficiently mature.
Among other moves, the NPD
pressed Hydro in December 1987
to drill two virtually horizontal
wells in the oil-bearing strata on
what became Oseberg South.
The companies nevertheless
insisted that the thin and extensive oil zones in Troll posed new
technological challenges for both
The conclusion on dynamic drilling was undoubtedly the
most important technical breakthrough for the Troll oil.
(Tore Bjordal)
placing the bit and drilling long,
stable boreholes.
According to Mr Bjordal, Shell
was the most adamant of the
operators in claiming that a commitment to developing innovative
technology would be too risky.
It pointed in part to the fact
that the Troll development project was already breaching technological barriers presented by
deep water and tough weather.
However, the NPD team
investigated what had been done
elsewhere and discovered that
Shell and the other international
companies in the Troll group were
surprisingly ill-informed.
With the aid of relatively unsophisticated search methods, the
agency could establish that many
horizontal wells had already been
drilled around the globe.
Oseberg
Plans to inject Troll gas in Oseberg
to improve oil recovery from this
Hydro development were submitted in the midst of the fight over
the oil and the jockeying for position by the operators.
The NPD was keen on this
Troll Oseberg gas injection (Togi)
scheme, both for resource considerations and because it would
give experience in long-distance
multiphase flow of oil, water and
gas.
Hydro was made operator for
the subsea Togi installation on
Troll, but a majority of the Troll
licensees – Shell, Statoil, Mobil
and Conoco – opposed the proposal.
This quartet could thereby
block the whole project. Elf and
Total confirmed Hydro’s longstanding good relationship with
French interests by supporting
Togi.
The Statoil management
now experienced one of its big-
gest political shocks from an
unexpected quarter – a Labour
government exercising its state
ownership.
This administration had taken
over after a non-socialist coalition
had been defeated on a vote of
confidence in the Storting on 9
May 1986.
With Labour’s Arne Øien
installed as petroleum minister,
such a change would normally
have benefited Statoil. Its surprise
was all the greater when Mr Øien,
in his capacity as the company’s
general meeting, compelled it to
vote for Togi.
The licence accordingly
approved the plan, which
received a green light on 19
June 1986. In protest, Shell initiated tests in the Netherlands to
demonstrate that the project was
unworkable.
When these studies showed,
to the oil company’s astonishment, that the opposition to Togi
had no basis in reality, it changed
its strategy and fell back into line.
Hydro executed the project
with great enthusiasm, and
scored a success. The company
gained useful experience both
with long-distance multiphase
flow and subsea production in
deep water, which could later be
applied on Troll.
Three-phase
Unitisation laid the basis for a
three-phase development, starting with the gas in Troll East, then
the oil in Troll West and finally the
Troll West gas – expected to begin
flowing from 2024.
The plan for development and
operation (PDO) of Troll East gas
was approved in December 1986.
That confirmed Shell’s support for
starting in the east and producing
the oil on its own terms.
One consequence was that
the gas platform planned for Troll
West had to be transferred to the
eastern section, which posed no
problems.
Shell became development
operator for this Troll A facility,
with Statoil scheduled to take
over when output began. The
latter was also to sell the gas
and build the transport system
required.
Because the licensees had
been so reluctant to prioritise oil
production from Troll West, the
NPD and the MPE concluded that
this phase required a separate
operator.
That had to be a company
which had or could adopt a different agenda from gas alone.
The choice lay between Statoil
and Hydro, but the former was to
take over Troll A when Shell was
finished.
The non-socialist government
wanted Statoil and Hydro to be
on an equal footing as Troll operators, and asked Statoil to choose
between gas transport and the oil
operatorship.
Hydro had previously been
“compensated” with responsibility for the “diamond block”, which
contained Visund but where the
first well proved to be dry.
In other words, Hydro’s organisation had spare capacity and was
pinning its hopes on Troll. But
some disagreement exists over
how much it or Statoil wanted the
oil operatorship.
The perception in the NPD
was that many people in both
companies still believed that Troll
was primarily a gas field and that
the oil was actually a dead end.
All the companies manoeuvred tactically in their fight over
the assets, but both Statoil and
Hydro were undoubtedly interested in the oil job if it was indisputably a separate assignment.
In a letter to the MPE in
January 1986, Hydro claimed that
the Storting’s decision to divide
roles equally between it and
Statoil was could not be implemented with Shell as development operator on Troll East.
It concluded: “Restricting
Shell/Statoil’s operatorship to the
first gas platform opens opportunities for Hydro’s involvement in
building the transport system and
possibly in oil production”.
With Labour in government,
Statoil’s hopes of securing the
oil operatorship rose. Mr Øien
was once again forced to choose
between the wholly and partly
state-owned companies.
He reprised his Togi decision
and took Hydro’s side, to widespread surprise. The Storting
voted in December 1986 to make
Hydro operator for a possible Troll
West oil project.
The unitisation deal was formally approved nine days later.
Both decisions fitted the NPD’s
strategy of producing the oil, and
its Troll team finally saw light at
the end of the tunnel.
Competition
With Hydro in the driving seat
for the oil, the well-established
competition on the NCS between
it and Statoil moved to a new and
demanding setting.
These two arch-rivals had
already challenged each other
strategically and technologically
as operators and partners in various fields.
They were now both to be
operators in one and the same
production licence. Hydro was
probably an optimum choice for
the oil, precisely because Statoil
was its “opponent” as gas producer.
A high tax rate of 78 per cent
and the consequent good opportunities for depreciation had
made the NCS the world’s leading
oil technology lab.
The traditional rivalry between
Statoil and Hydro also helped
Norway to position itself as the
most innovative and creative oil
province on the planet.
Hydro itself did not believe
initially that the oil would prove
particularly profitable, but committed itself flat out to the project.
That was because the work
involved so many technological development opportunities.
The company had already shown
great interest in adopting new
solutions on Oseberg and Togi.
Where the Troll partnership
was concerned, however, it did
not have so much to offer apart
from the weight provided by the
backing of the NPD and the MPE.
A key reason for the persistent reluctance to commit to the
oil was and is the use of present
value calculations by the companies in guiding investment to the
most profitable targets.
Such calculations clearly
showed that the most rewarding
route was to produce as much gas
as possible in the quickest possible way. Waiting for the oil would
reduce present value.
Hydro’s present value results
for Troll were not very different
from those produced by Shell and
Saga. But the operator role also
had a value in itself.
Apart from the prestige, being
in the driving seat provided
opportunities to develop its own
organisation and attract the best
brains by offering interesting and
important jobs.
The operatorship helped to
boost Hydro’s commitment to
making the project as profitable
as possible. It may also have felt
that success with the oil would
pay off in future licence awards.
Active
According to a 2006 report for
Hydro from Econ Analyse, the
NPD “played a much more active
role in developing [Troll’s] oil
resources than it did in any previous project on the NCS”.
To counter licensee doubts
over horizontal drilling, the
agency held a two-day seminar
in April 1988 to identify what was
happening internationally on
recovery from thin oil zones.
Its Troll team had demonstrated through simulations as
early as 1982 that horizontal wells
boosted production rates compared with vertical drilling.
These studies had concluded
that oil recovery was profitable
from the thick zones but only
marginally commercial with the
thin layers.
The NPD had followed up this
work by gathering information on
horizontal drilling from all over
the world, and now invited all
the relevant players to attend the
seminar.
It emerged there that the
Soviet Union had drilled short
horizontal wells as early as the
1930s and vertical boreholes with
horizontal sidetracks in the 1960s.
Soviet drillers had completed
many multilateral and horizontal
wells up to 1980, primarily in
oil zones under gas caps. These
could yield up to 10 times the
output of conventional drilling,
and often give higher recovery
factors.
A virtually horizontal well had
been drilled through an oil layer
only four-eight metres thick with
a gas cap on Exxon’s Snapper field
off Australia.
Successful horizontal drilling over as much as 500 metres
was reported at Prudhoe Bay in
Alaska, and operator Arco claimed
a maximum deviation of onethree metres from the planned
path.
With Elf reporting similar
experiences from the Mediterranean, the seminar gave a
fresh boost to a process which
would make Troll Norway’s big-
If the next few wells demonstrate that you are right, you’ll have
to put up with drilling a lot more test wells. We won’t give way
until the whole oil potential has been checked. (NPD letter to the Troll licensees)
gest field and revolutionise oil
drilling worldwide.
“The information presented
clearly showed that horizontal
drilling was no innovation,” says
Mr Krakstad. “So the idea that
Hydro and the NCS were pioneers
here is not correct.”
He was working in a consultancy when the seminar took
place, but nevertheless received
an invitation to attend because of
his broad expertise in this area.
He had also been employed
by Hydro as an adviser on Troll
issues, before moving to Statoil
for a time to advise on reservoir
assessments related to the field.
“Hydro may have been the
first to drill horizontally from a
floating rig,” acknowledges Mr
Krakstad, who is completing his
career this year – back in the Troll
team he formed 30 years ago.
“However, its biggest achievement was that it started well
down the field – to use a sporting
metaphor – but quickly caught up
with the leaders.
“So the company deserves all
possible credit for the advanced
oil production which was further
developed on Troll, with long
sidetracks and world-class reservoir management.”
Reachable
Horizontal wells now represented
the only way forward. So it was
no surprise when Hydro told the
technical committee that the oil
layers in the unconsolidated Troll
West sands were reachable with
dynamic drilling.
It also reported in October
1988 that oil production with horizontal wells would be profitable
at prices of USD 12-15 per barrel.
“The conclusion on dynamic
drilling was undoubtedly the
most important technical breakthrough for the Troll oil,” says Mr
Bjordal. “But it hadn’t been salvaged yet.”
Resistance among the licensees persisted. The companies still
feared that they faced an experiment which would cost them a
lot and delay revenues from gas
production.
The dispute became so bitter around 1990 that NPD information manager Jan Hagland
described it in the media as a case
of putting the national interest
above market and company interests.
“We will speak out on behalf
of the oil,” he announced, and
threatened to take the issue to
compulsory arbitration. The NPD
also resolved to make it clear who
was in charge.
At a meeting with the Troll
management committee, Messrs
Bjordal and Al-Kasim made it
crystal clear that gas production
would only be allowed in Troll
West when long-term tests had
been conducted in both thick and
thin oil zones.
“We’re not committed to producing the Troll oil at any price,
but you shouldn’t nurse any
hopes that we’ll drop our demand
for long-term testing,” Mr Al-Kasim
said.
He was inundated with
requests to change his mind, but
stuck to his guns. Hydro was able
to continue planning test wells
and production.
Shell had long thought it
would secure a majority in the
licence partnership against these
plans, but gave way after a timeout was included in the project.
Despite initial opposition from
the company’s head office in the
Hague, the management committee’s vote on oil testing was
thereby unanimous.
Triumph
It was accordingly a triumph
when Hydro announced on 30
November 1989 that the first
“true” horizontal well on the NCS
had been completed.
The bit had penetrated a
22-metre-thick oil zone at a depth
of 1 550 metres beneath the platform and followed it horizontally
for 502 metres.
This well stayed closer to the
water contact than to the gas cap
at all times. The success criterion
had always been that the bit
remained within a tolerance of
plus/minus three metres.
Although the operation could
hardly be called groundbreaking in international terms, the
triumph related first and foremost
to international resource management.
Troll oil could no longer be
played down or assessed as a byproduct from the development of
the field’s gas.
The test well was also gratifying from another perspective,
because it revealed large quantities of mica in the reservoir. That
would inhibit gas and water intrusion during oil production.
“It was nothing short of
incredible,” according to one
source. “The companies no longer
had any technical arguments left.
They had to produce the oil first.”
That was not all. Once test
production had been agreed, it
proved to exceed all expectations
and challenged the capacity of
the Petrojarl ship handling this
operation.
Hydro tested both thick and
thin oil zones between January
1990 and May 1991, recovering
more than six million barrels of
crude and making NOK 500 million in profit.
However, testing of a 13-14
metre layer in the Troll West gas
province was not quite as positive
as the results from the thick layer
tested first.
Another outcome was that the
NPD – highly gratified at the test
results – increased its estimate of
Troll’s oil reserves by more than
50 per cent to over 400 million
recoverable barrels.
Hydro was so overjoyed at the
success that, for the first time, it
outdid the NPD in its assessment
of the field’s probable oil output.
On that basis, its optimistic
drilling and reservoir experts
joined forces with the contractors
to continue developing horizontal
drilling, production and intelligent subsea solutions.
Incredibly, some of the licensees were still opposed to oil production on the basis that the tests
were conducted with the best
prospects.
Nobody could guarantee that
the many wells to be drilled elsewhere would be just as productive, they argued. But the NPD’s
response was clear:
“If the next few wells demonstrate that you are right, you’ll
have to put up with drilling a lot
more test wells. We won’t give
way until the whole oil potential
has been checked.”
Possible
The management committee
voted in principle on 23 January
1991 to develop the Troll West oil
province, five years after Shell had
declared that this would be neither possible nor profitable.
To be fair, the fact that oil
prices had doubled over the intervening period from USD 10 per
barrel to USD 20 played its part in
this decision.
Disputes continued in the
licence, and focused now on the
choice of development concept –
with the relationship between oil
and gas output as the crucial element.
Put simply, Hydro wanted to
produce both crude and gas from
the “oil platform” on Troll West,
while the other partners feared
that this would give it too dominant a position.
The eventual solution was that
the Troll West installation would
be built to handle oil and associated gas only, with the rest of the
gas left for later.
While the partners wanted gas
from Troll East processed on the
platform, this approach ran into a
weight problem – the heavier the
topsides, the higher the investment cost.
Hydro came up with a “Little
Troll” concept, which involved a
number of subsea production systems with multiphase flow transport to land on the Togi model.
The other licensees opposed
this idea, and stuck to the Troll A
solution. They were backed by
the NPD, which emphasised that a
platform would boost gas recovery.
Plans call for 12-14 wells to be drilled annually. We consider it
important to maintain drilling activity in order to ensure
optimum oil output. (Torgunn Kvervavik Sheridan)
This was because it could
accommodate compressors to
help maintain production as
reservoir pressure declined. Two
such units have been installed on
Troll A, with two more planned.
However, the NPD felt that full
gas processing on the platform
would be too complicated and
asked for a study on piping the
unprocessed wellstream to land.
That eliminated the problem
of excessive topside weight while
maintaining a high recovery factor. The challenge lay in transporting a mix of oil, gas and water
over 68 kilometres.
Shell and some in Statoil stuck
to the idea of offshore processing,
but the NPD would not approve
it unless multiphase flow to land
was considered. Statoil eventually
supported that.
The deal was that the state
company would conduct an internal study and, if this showed that
piping the wellstream ashore was
best, convince Shell that it should
be investigated jointly.
Doubts were laid to rest when
the pipeline plan turned out to
be both better and safer. The two
companies adopted this solution,
thanks not least to Shell’s earlier
work on Togi.
On 15 March 1990, the Troll
management committee agreed
to land the wellstream at Kollsnes
in Øygarden local authority west
of Bergen. The MPE approved on
21 December 1991.
Along the way, the NPD had
persuaded the partnership to
strengthen Troll A in order to
extend its design life as a producing unit from 50 to 70 years.
The reason was once again
concern for the oil. With 20 additional years for gas production,
time would not run short for
recovering the crude.
Various solutions were
assessed before a fixed concrete
gravity base structure (GBS) was
chosen. Alternatives included tak-
ing oil and gas directly ashore via
tunnels under the seabed – but
this idea went no further than the
NPD.
Concrete
While Troll A became the tallest
structure ever moved by humans,
the Troll B oil platform ranks as
first-ever semi-submersible concrete-hulled production floater
with catenary mooring.
It came from the newly
established Kværner Concrete
Construction yard at
Hanøytangen outside Bergen,
while all the GBSs for Statoil
were built at Hinnavågen near
Stavanger.
That makes this platform an
example of the technological
diversity which could flourish
under the rivalry between the two
Norwegian companies.
Great disagreement arose during the design phase for Troll B
over its production capacity, with
Hydro still seeking to maximise
everything to do with oil and its
partners holding back.
The main concern for Statoil
and Shell was to keep costs down
in a project they felt was not the
most profitable. A majority of the
partners felt 75-100 000 barrels
per day was enough.
For its part, the NPD felt that
this was only sufficient for the
thick layers in the south of the oil
province, and wanted to increase
capacity to handle the even thicker northern zones.
It also insisted that the platform had to be able to receive
oil from five-six separate subsea
installations, which included the
thin oil strata in the gas province.
Uncertainty about the amount
of recoverable oil was naturally
high, but the optimistic Troll team
pointed out that greater capacity
would mean lower costs per bar-
rel produced.
Mr Bjordal says the NPD and
Hydro considered at this point
how strongly they should push
the capacity issue because success with the thin zones might
anyway make a second platform
necessary.
The outcome was a design
with a top output of almost 160 000 barrels per day, but the
ability to increase this sharply that
if initial production exceeded the
estimates.
According to Mr Bjordal, this
25 Plus project – based on 25 000
cubic metres per day – meant
that the actual capacity could be
boosted to at least 250 000 daily
barrels.
Shell succeeded in getting a
reference team formed for the
licence in order to reassess the
design and capacity issue on an
independent basis.
This group quickly established
that 25 Plus in reality assumed
that Troll contained much larger
oil volumes than had earlier been
assessed.
At that time, it was unclear
what effect the contact between
the eastern and western reservoirs would have. Producing gas
in the east might in the worst
case reduce pressure in Troll West.
The companies feared that the
government would then restrict
gas production to the benefit of
oil output. In that case, big oil
processing capacity would benefit
gas.
Whatever the reasons, the
licensees approved 25 Plus. And
actual oil production confirmed
the estimates drawn up by the
NPD and Hydro.
Capacity on Troll B, including
the number of wells, sidetracks
and production, proved far too
small and made a second oil platform relevant.
When output was at its peak,
Troll B’s daily capacity was around
290 000 barrels or 130 000 barrels
more than the original estimate.
Closer investigation of the oil
in the relatively thick zones provided some good news because
it proved less difficult to process
than first feared.
The bad news was the huge
proportion of water which would
come up with the crude. This
called for larger and heavier processing facilities, which did not
make the partners happy.
To reduce the volume of
produced water, Hydro commissioned advanced injection technology installed on the seabed to
return water to the reservoir. But
topside weight remained high.
Storing oil on the platform
also emerged as a problem.
Plans called for the crude to be
taken off by shuttle tankers, with
enough storage for seven days of
output in the event of storms.
However, increased processing capacity might reduce that
period to just three-four days,
with a corresponding weakening
in cash flow.
High waves and much rocking
could also cause the stored oil
to foam, which meant it took up
more space than calculated. So
greater capacity was needed to
be on the safe side.
Worries about postponed
production revenues accordingly
had to be balanced against the
prospect of increased costs.
Piping
All these considerations prompted the Troll team, headed by Mr
Bjordal, Leif Erik Abrahamsen and
Åse Thomsen, to assess piping the
oil ashore on the basis of socioeconomic criteria.
Hydro believed this would be
too complex, and was not initially
particularly enthusiastic. But it
found a pipeline to its own Sture
terminal near Kollsnes an acceptable solution.
Statoil also eventually advocated a pipeline, but to its own
Mongstad refinery a little further
north. That sparked another bitter
technology-driven war between
the two companies.
Hydro knew that Statoil’s
route would be more demanding,
although crossing the submarine
Norwegian Trench in 300 metres
of water was no longer a problem.
But the Mongstad Fjord is
600-700 metres deep, and its bottom is so muddy that it would
impossible to find a solid founda-
tion for a pipeline.
The latter accordingly had
to be laid partly along the steep
underwater slopes on its way to
the refinery. Nobody had overcome such challenges before.
Statoil tried to tempt its partners by suggesting that bringing
Troll oil to Mongstad would permit blending it with crude from
Statfjord and other fields, and
thereby boost its price.
At the same, the company’s
specialists threw themselves
enthusiastically over the “impossible” challenges and eventually
came up with a plan for laying a
pipeline.
The price tag was put at
roughly NOK 800 million for a
successful project, which might
rise to NOK 1.3 billion were unexpected problems encountered.
Statoil got its plans approved,
and the company went to work
on what was unquestionably the
boldest pipeline project attempted on the NCS.
Hydro had warned in particular about a difficult passage along
the steep side of the Mongstad
fjord, where the pipelayers had
no more than two metres of tolerance.
When the pipeline reached
this point, matters turned out as
Hydro had feared. It fell off the
slope and landed on the seabed.
But that ended as Statoil had
hoped – the line survived the fall
and the project could be completed.
While Hydro had won a Troll
oil battle which most people
would have bet against, Statoil
caused just as much surprise with
its pipeline victory.
The NPD’s role was less visible.
Without the Troll team’s efforts,
however, there would probably
have been no battles to win for
either Hydro or Statoil.
It is worth noting, moreover,
that the licensees also had a long
debate over the capacity of the
pipeline, with the majority still
sticking to the strategy of a minimum solution.
Hydro and the NPD, on the
other hand, noted that it cost relatively little to increase the dimen-
sions. The outcome was a 16-inch
line capable of carrying 190 000
barrels per day.
Production rapidly exceeded
290 000 daily barrels, but adding flow improver – a patented
and expensive substance – to the
oil boosted pipeline capacity by
about 50 per cent.
The Troll Oil project proved a
great success, and confirmed the
NPD’s earlier assumptions that the
field needed to be “carpet drilled”
to get out all the crude.
When that happened, oil
flowed out in unimaginable quantities – so much, in fact, that it
was resolved to build another oil
platform for Troll West.
Troll C was also semi-submersible, but with a steel hull. It
was built by Umoe in Haugesund,
which could draw on many of
the solutions from fabricating
the Visund platform, and capacity problems were avoided with a
20-inch pipeline to land.
Crucial
One reason why the NPD came
to play such a crucial role on Troll
was that its team for this field
was represented in all the subcommittees – technical, reservoir,
commercial and operator.
Mr Bjordal worked with Troll
for 14 years and led the team for
nine. He attended virtually all
sub-committee meetings as well
as the management committee,
where the key decisions were
taken.
Combined with the team’s
own expertise, this gave the NPD
great influence. The MPE’s representative, Øyvind Rekdal, who also
sat on the management committee, provided good backing.
Over the years, the Troll team
won acceptance for government
ambitions which differed in many
cases from those of the oil companies.
Mr Bjordal’s power derived
first and foremost from the fact
that the licensees had to get him
and the NPD on side in order to
implement their desired plans.
This was underpinned by the
knowledge that the Petroleum
Activities Act allowed the government to demand that the companies helped to maximise national
value creation.
Moreover, they were aware
that putting their own interests
ahead of the nation’s would cause
them problems when trying to
secure new assignments on the
NCS.
Developing Troll went fairly
smoothly. The biggest deviation
from the plans was that phase
two actually came on stream
ahead of phase one when oil production began on 19 September
1995.
Gas did not begin to flow from
the first stage on Troll East until
9 February 1996, to Hydro’s great
gratification.
The field then began to play
its guarantor role as a swing gas
producer, which made it possible
to sell associated gas from other
oil fields. Such output is often
erratic.
This position was formalised
through the Troll Commercial
Model, an agreement which
marked Norway’s real arrival as a
gas supplier.
Share
The growing success of Troll Oil
prompted Shell to challenge its
equity share in the unitised field
as being too low. It had, after all,
been the original operator on Troll
West where the crude lay.
In the unitisation process, it
had been agreed that only one
per cent of the total recoverable
oil was contained in the thin layers in the gas province.
However, groundbreaking
technological progress had boosted the recovery factor there to
27 per cent. This meant that the
“almost valueless” area accounted
for 64 per cent of the oil, and the
“marginally profitable” thicker
zones for just 36 per cent.
Arguing that nobody could
have predicted these changes
during the initial unitisation, Shell,
TotalFinaElf, Conoco and Total
took legal action against the three
Norwegian companies.
The claimants wanted the oil
in the thin zones to be given the
same weight as in the thick layers.
That would have boosted their
share of Troll West by about three
per cent to 34.2 per cent.
Shell and its fellow litigants
suffered a crushing defeat in
the arbitration judgement of 15
December 2000. They lost on all
counts and had to pay NOK 4 million in costs to the winners plus
court fees.
Another quarrel over oil versus
gas in Troll went public in January
2006, when Statoil and the other
partners – except Hydro – wanted
to boost gas output to win new
export market shares.
“We’ve been asked to sell
more gas to the UK and Europe,
in the order of 20-25 billion cubic
metres per year,” Statoil chief
executive Helge Lund explained
to Stavanger Aftenblad.
Tormod Slåtsveen at the NPD
warned yet again that increasing
gas offtake could lower reservoir
We felt that Statoil also presented good plans for IOR on
Troll in the coming year. (Tomas Mørch)
pressure and cause the underlying oil to be lost for ever.
As chief executive of Hydro,
Eivind Reiten’s prudent comment
was that “we must arrive at an
optimum resource management
for the long term”.
By February, the two sides
had reportedly calmed down and
postponed a debate on increased
gas sales by a year. No reasons
were given for this delay.
However, it is reasonable to
speculate that talks on merging
Statoil and Hydro’s oil and energy
division may already have been
under way.
These were made public the
following December, when it also
became clear that the marriage
would have the blessing of the
Labour government as the biggest owner of both companies.
When Statoil and Hydro
became a single company, the
long-standing disputes over Troll
came to an end with a single
operator for both oil and gas.
But the MPE had received a
proposal from Mr Hinderaker –
as head of the NPD’s Troll team
– and asked the companies for
more detailed studies before submitting further plans.
“We made particularly good
use of the extra year we got,” Mr
Hinderaker explains. The NPD sent
a very detailed report to the MPE
in 2007 which assessed all aspects
of gas offtake versus oil recovery.
Grip
The Statoil-Hydro marriage came
into formal effect on 1 October
2007, ending their technologyboosting rivalry. But the government kept a firm grip on offshore
operations.
Seventeen days after the
merger, then oil minister Åslaug
Haga put a stop to the Troll future
development project being pursued by the field’s licensees. She
made it known that these plans,
due to be submitted the following
January, would not be approved.
As before, the background
for this scheme was a desire to
increase gas exports. But the
opposition had changed with the
disappearance of Hydro’s pro-oil
voice.
While not proposing any
expansion in total gas recovery,
the plans called for more gas
to be produced over a shorter
period – again without damaging
prospects for improved oil recovery (IOR).
The NPD did not agree that
this was possible, and based its
arguments on experience from
the Ekofisk and Snorre fields in
the North Sea.
This showed that recovering
oil from large fields with complex reservoirs takes a long time.
Unlike the crude, gas which has to
wait can be recovered later.
As usual, the MPE shared the
NPD’s view of resource management on Troll. The agency’s gas
team also concluded that the
future development project was
poorly founded.
This was because the gas volumes involved were far too small
to make the scheme profitable
– not least because it required
investment in a new export pipeline to continental Europe.
The NPD’s study showed a
continued potential for IOR from
the field, and that the latest gas
plans might cause the direct loss
of 65 million barrels of oil.
This figure could increase to
600 million barrels over Troll’s producing life – equal to total recoverable oil in Norne and Grane or
10 times the Gjøa field.
At an oil price of USD 100 per
barrel and an exchange rate of
NOK 6 per US dollar, that represented a gross value of NOK 360
billion.
Yet again, in other words, the
government opposed the licensees to the benefit of Troll oil. Ms
Haga’s rejection was welcomed
by the opposition parties, by the
media and beyond.
That was because short-term
gains from increased gas sales
could not offset losses related
to reduced crude production in
Norway as an oil nation.
In the press release announcing her decision, Ms Haga also
noted that Troll alone contains
roughly 10 per cent of all the oil
and gas on the NCS.
Norway ranks as one of
Europe’s most important gas
suppliers, delivering on average
16 per cent of the continent’s
requirements every year.
To reduce possible uncertainty
caused by rejecting the Troll plan,
Ms Haga reassured the buyer
countries that Norway’s role in
their gas supply would remain
unchanged.
She also emphasised that gas
exports would continue to rise
from 83 billion cubic metres per
annum in 2007 to 125-140 billion
over the next decade.
Attempt
A few year’s after Ms Haga’s rejection, the Troll partners made a
new attempt to increase gas
recovery. Specifically, they wanted
to sell more than had been
approved for the 2011-12 gas
year.
After further detailed assessments, the NPD again put its foot
down. Statoil responded with a
plan to increase the number of
rigs drilling oil producers from
three to four.
This was not a bad countermove, given the general shortage
of rigs on the NCS. Expanding
drilling capacity meant that more
oil would be produced earlier –
which could bring forward gas
output.
Statoil transferred the
Transocean Leader unit from
appraisal drilling on the major
new Johan Sverdrup oil discovery
in the North Sea.
This production solution
for Troll oil won Statoil Rystad
Energy’s prize as field operator of
the year for 2011. Not surprisingly,
the company sent the NPD an
e-mail to thank it for hassling the
partnership.
It is worth mentioning here
that Hydro received the NPD’s
first IOR prize in 1988 for its work
on Troll oil. Halliburton and Baker
Hughes got the same award in
2006 for further development of
well technology on the field.
And Mr Hinderaker was honoured by Rystad Energy in 2010
for his long-standing commitment to IOR on such fields as
Ekofisk and Oseberg as well as
Troll.
In their application for a
production permit covering the
2012-13 gas year, the Troll licensees sought to maintain gas output at the current level.
This submission was based on
an approved long-term strategy
involving the use of four rigs to
drill oil production wells.
“We felt that Statoil also presented good plans for IOR on Troll
in the coming year and had no
hesitation in recommending last
year’s solution to the MPE,” says
Mr Mørch.
Ever-better technology and
rising oil prices mean production
from parts of the thin oil zones in
Troll East cannot be written off.
The volumes in place there total
some 1.3 billion barrels, or about
20 per cent of the total for the
field.
A well drilled in 2007 showed
that the oil zone in Troll East is sixnine metres thick on the northern flank, but no more than four
metres at the southern end.
It is entirely possible in technical terms to reach parts of these
reserves in the north, but the
state of the reservoir means that
this has not been considered
commercial so far.
The NPD has been unsure
throughout about the scope of
the contact between the gas in
Troll East and the oil/gas in Troll
West.
Nevertheless, the cross-over
is so small that it represents no
major problem for oil recovery in
the west. Gas output on Troll East
is not expected to undermine
possible oil production.
Third phase
Embracing gas production from
Troll West, the third phase will
be implemented when no profitable oil remains to be recovered,
with the final IOR well likely to be
drilled around 2020.
“That’s based on a long-term
drilling strategy with four rigs on
the western part and continued
technology development,” says
Ms Sheridan, the current Troll
team leader at the NPD.
“Since our job is to ensure the
maximum value creation from
Troll, [the 2020 date] and a startup for the third phase remain
uncertain.
“We’re pleased that a longterm strategy with four rigs has
been adopted by the licensees.
Plans call for 12-14 wells to be
drilled annually. We consider it
important to maintain drilling
activity in order to ensure optimum oil output.”
The Troll production licence
is due to expire in 2030. Before
then, key parts of the field’s infrastructure will need upgrading for
continued use.
Troll B has the shortest producing life. Its topside and the
subsea templates are designed to
last until 2020, but that could be
extended. The concrete hull will
endure until 2040.
Opportunities also exist to
extend the producing life of the
C platform and associated subsea
equipment, which are designed
to operate until 2024.
The problem is least acute on
the big Troll A gas platform, which
can be kept in production until
2064.
No decision has been taken
on future solutions. But Troll’s
unique position as an oil and gas
field on the NCS is set to remain
unchallenged.
Written sources include the Facts
publication from the Ministry of
Petroleum and Energy/NPD, various
papers delivered by NPD personnel
and press releases from the NPD and
the MPE. Some of these are available in English. Other sources are
in Norwegian, among them: Norsk
Oljehistorie volume II, Hemmeligheten
bak det norske oljeeventyret, by Per
Lars Tonstad, 1001 brønn, the NPD’s
25th anniversary history by Bjørn
Vidar Lerøen, Teknologiske valg under
utbyggingen av Oseberg-feltet, thesis by Trond Schrader Kristiansen,
University of Oslo, 1997, Troll Olje,
thesis by Ragnhild Rein Boreved,
University of Oslo, 2004, Econ Analyse
report for Norsk Hydro on Troll Oil in
2006, and the arbitration ruling on
equity interests in Troll, December
2000. In addition come articles in the
media.
Troll B. (Photo: Øyvind Hagen / Statoil)
Formidable figures
Twice as big
Many metres
Estimates of recoverable oil
reserves in Troll have risen from
zero to a massive 1.6 billion barrels. Some 200 million barrels
still remain, according to today’s
approved plans
The first plan for development
and operation (PDO) in 1983
focused entirely on the gas. By
2000-05, Troll had become the
largest oil producer on the NCS.
Recoverable oil in the Troll
West oil province was put at just
under 350 million barrels in the
PDO submitted for Phase Two in
1991.
With oil in place estimated at
almost one billion barrels, that
yielded a recovery factor of 35 per
cent. That has risen today to 40
per cent after the addition of 160
million recoverable barrels in the
gas province.
Statoil’s ambition is to increase
recoverable oil reserves in Troll
West from today’s 1.6 billion barrels to roughly 2.1 billion.
Gas reserves in Troll total 1 400 billion cubic metres. Given
today’s oil estimate of 1.6 billion
barrels, the field contains 10 850
million barrels of recoverable oil
equivalent (oe).
By comparison, Ekofisk and
Statfjord originally contained 4 503 million and 4 050 million
barrels of oe respectively.
That means Troll contains
twice as much oil and gas as both
the second and third largest fields
on the NCS.
A total of 161 production and 27
exploration wells had been drilled
on Troll West up to March 2012.
The longest of these measured 7 703 metres, with a horizontal
length of 5 700 metres.
Oil in Troll East totals just under
1.2 billion barrels, but has been
displaced into both the aquifer
and the gas cap. That makes it difficult to produce.
A small proportion on the
northernmost flank could be
recoverable, but oil is largely out of
the picture in this part of the field.
Gas giant
Troll is one of the world’s largest
offshore gas fields, with original
resources exceeding 1 400 billion
cubic metres. The second largest
gas field on the NCS, Ormen
Lange, contains about 300 billion
cubic metres.
Thirty-nine production wells
have been drilled from Troll A on
the eastern side of the field. In
addition come five wells for the
Troll Oseberg gas injection (Togi)
project on the south-eastern flank
of Troll East.
SCIENCE STUDIES
Classroom caverns
Four marble caves in northern Norway are being used to teach maths,
biology and geology through practical exercises. And the project is
imbued with the spirit of scientist Isaac Newton.
| Bjørn Rasen
“We want young people to
learn geology,” NPD geologist
Terje Solbakk told Norwegian
Continental Shelf 3/2009 [see
www.npd.no/publications] in a
report on the cavern course.
“I hope to strike a spark
with some of these students
by showing them the fantastic
caves here at Beiarn in Nordland
county.”
That was in an early phase,
when Mr Solbakk and teachers
Hege Sæther and Sture Moldjord
took the initiative to create the
underground education venue.
They also got it recognised
as one of Norway’s nationwide
“Newton Rooms” – teaching facilities with the emphasis on science
subjects in the secondary school
curriculum.
High-quality instruction is
offered in these locations by
approved Newton educators, and
both Ms Sæther and Mr Moldjord
have this accreditation.
They have developed the
teaching programme together
with Mr Solbakk. University of
Bergen professor and cave specialist Stein-Erik Lauritzen has also
contributed.
Multidisciplinary
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1726)
was a British mathematician,
physicist, astronomer,
alchemist, chemist, inventor
and natural philosopher.
He is regarded as one of the
greatest scientists in history.
After a couple of years of
effort and adjustments, the
caves were formally approved
in February 2012 by the First
Scandinavia charitable foundation.
The latter is responsible for
the Newton Room concept, and
also organises the First Lego
League science competition for
children.
Direct contact is probably the
best way to learn geology. The
Newton scheme aims to provide
positive science experiences and
the chance to learn through practical activities – including below
ground.
Beiarn’s caves are old, and Mr
Solbakk has found evidence that
they could have been formed
several hundred thousand years
ago.
Since Norwegian Continental
Shelf first reported on the Beiarn
project, Ms Sæther and Mr
Moldjord have made a number of
changes to the programme.
Once the pupils were out the
traditional classroom, they wanted to see and touch. Too much
talk was uninteresting, and they
quickly dropped out.
Now, however, feedback from
both teachers and students on
the programme is uniformly positive. The setting provides a good
arena for learning more about
geology and cave formation.
Ms Sæther and Mr Moldjord
have clear goals for the course
they offer, and assume that the
youngsters have done preparatory work before they arrive.
Inauguration. Pupils from Bodø had the honour of cutting the red ribbon and declaring the Newton Room in Beiarn open in
September 2010. Formal approval was received in 2012. (Photo: Terje Solbakk)
A compendium of assignments can be downloaded from
the internet, and a test has also
been posted for the students to
take afterwards.
The “Cave Room” course lasts
for two days, starting with an
immediate visit below ground
where the pupils find posters with
assignments to be completed.
On the second day, they follow a nature trail to tackle geological, mathematical and biological
tasks and end up taking a quiz.
Results from the assignments
set and the quiz indicate that
visiting students largely meet the
educational goals, according to
the two teachers.
“During a trial course in the
autumn of 2009, I asked whether
geology was a relevant subject
for study,” Mr Solbakk recalls.
“Only one of the students raised
their hand.
“I took that as a victory. With
today’s programme, I think even
more hands would have been
raised.”
16
CAveS wiTH ClASS
Bjørn Rasen (text and photos)
17
NPD geologist Terje Solbakk is taking groups
of 15-year-olds caving in a bid to inspire
greater interest in science studies – one of
many such initiatives by concerned people in
Norway.
Caving enthusiast. Deep inside the cavern,
geologist – and Newton teacher for the occasion – Terje Solbakk gets the full attention of the
schoolchildren.
On the spot. Facsimile from Norwegian Continental Shelf no 3/2009.
Terje Solbakk from the NPD on the right.
There and back again
Views on finding oil in the far north of the NCS were initially optimistic,
turned to pessimism and have now rebounded. Prospects in
the Barents Sea are seen today as more positive than ever.
| Astri Sivertsen
Changed times. The start-up of the gas liquefaction plant at Melkøya marked a new era for people in Hammerfest. (Photo: Astri Sivertsen)
“When I worked in my younger
days on what’s now the Skrugard
discovery, we saw nothing in
the seismic maps except a lot of
noise.”
This comment by geologist
and NPD director general Bente
Nyland came in a speech she
gave at the annual Barents Sea
conference in Hammerfest during
May.
The meeting attracted a
record of more than 400 delegates, not least because of the
Skrugard and Havis discoveries
which are drawing the oil industry
north after many years of hesitation.
According to Nyland, 37
companies nominated areas
which could be interesting for the
22nd licensing round due to be
announced this summer. A majority lie in the Barents Sea.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had
so many nominations in this part
of the NCS,” she says. “In the late
1980s and early 1990s, only twothree companies were interested.”
Since Nyland and her colleagues saw only noise in the seismic
data during the late 1980s, tools
for interpreting such information
in the Barents Sea have improved
considerably.
Problem
“Optimism was high in the early
1980s,” says NPD geologist Bjørn
Anders Lundschien about the ups
and downs in the largest area of
the NCS since it was partly opened
for oil exploration in 1979.
“Discoveries were made at an
early stage,” he adds. “The problem was that they contained a
lot of gas and little in the way of
oil.”
As he points out, gas discoveries need to be very substantial
before it becomes economic to
develop them in a new area without any existing infrastructure.
Expectations of finding oil
had been high, thanks to the geology of this region. But the very
first well drilled in 1980 proved to
be dry, just like its successors.
“Traces of hydrocarbons were
found in virtually all the wells,”
reports Lundschien, who notes
that large volumes of oil and gas
had undoubtedly been present at
one time.
The explanation of where
the oil has gone lies in the fairly
complex geological history of the
Barents Sea, with land uplift and
erosion.
On the one hand, gas has
expanded in the reservoirs and
driven the liquids out. On the
other, the cap rocks have fractured and the oil simply leaked
away.
It took some time before anybody understood these processes, and what they meant for the
prospects of finding oil in the
Barents Sea.
All petroleum accumulations
are fundamentally temporary,
observes Lundschien. “No cap
rocks are totally impermeable. But
they can trap resources for a very
long time.”
Gas
Statoil made the first big gas find
in the Barents Sea in 1984, but it
took 16 years before developing
this Snøhvit discovery with the
Askeladd and Albatross finds got
a green light.
Another seven years were to
pass before the Hammerfest LNG
gas liquefaction plant opened for
business at the Melkøya landfall
in northern Norway.
After proving small and scat-
tered gas deposits over many
years, Norsk Agip – now Eni –
found both oil and gas in 2000.
This Goliat field became the first oil
development in the Barents Sea.
In 2005, fresh confidence in
these waters was inspired among
geologists when Hydro drilled a
dry well in the Oblix prospect in
the Lopp High area.
Like other dry wells, this also
contained hydrocarbon traces.
But these proved to come from a
source rock older than Hekkingen,
which is the origin of the resources in both Snøhvit and Skrugard.
The geologists thereby obtained
confirmation that another rock
system existed which could generate oil and gas in areas where
Hekkingen is too shallow.
Petroleum will form only
when temperature and pressure
exceed a certain level, which calls
in turn for the source rock to lie a
good bit down in the sub-surface.
“It was disappointing to find
yet another leaking structure, but
evidence of older functioning
source rocks boosted optimism
about the area around Oblix and
further east,” says Mr Lundschien.
Moreover, Skrugard is also leaking. Gas is seeping out through
fractures in the cap rock, leaving
the oil behind. Mr Lundschien
says the experts are arguing over
why this should be.
His favourite theory is that
the leak on Skrugard functions
as a kind of safety valve, which
prevents the gas from expanding
in the reservoir and squeezing the
oil out.
Compared with Snøhvit,
which lies 2 400 metres down,
Skrugard is a relatively shallow
reservoir at 1 200 metres beneath the seabed. That may partly
explain the phenomenon.
ROCK SHOT
Plans
At the Hammerfest conference,
one senior executive after
another stood forth and presented their company’s plans for the
Barents Sea region.
These waters were dubbed
“the opportunity area” by Øystein
Michelsen, Statoil’s executive vice
president for development and
production in Norway.
The company envisages an
output of 400-500 000 barrels per
day by 2020 – four times today’s
level on Snøhvit, where the licensees are due to decide on a pos-
sible expansion of gas liquefaction.
Delegates at the conference
conducted a heated discussion on
whether such an increase, set for
a go-ahead decision soon, represents a sensible approach.
The alternative would be to
lay a new gas pipeline northwards
from the Åsgard area in the
Norwegian Sea. This debate generally boils down to which option
provides the most jobs on land.
Andrea Forzoni, chief executive of Eni Norge, identified the
Arctic as a strategically important
area for the Italian company.
Marulk in the Norwegian Sea
has just come on stream as Eni’s
first development as operator,
while Goliat is due to begin 15
years of production next year.
The new office being erected next to the cultural centre in
Hammerfest provides further evidence that Mr Forzoni is serious.
He promised 150-200 new jobs
and lots of work for suppliers.
One of these hopefuls is
German industrial group Xervon,
which offers scaffolding, surface
treatment and insulation services
and had a stand at the conference.
The big rush of service providers will come in a year, says Paul
Garvik, head of its Norwegian
department, who staffed this display. Xervon hopes to have stolen
a march on its competitors.
“In every other area, the players are already well established.
This is our chance to become part
of the Norwegian oil adventure.”
Before and after
Snøhvit
Three decades of
searching
One of the simplest tricks of the trade
for a journalist who wants to gauge
the mood of a local community is to
talk with a taxi driver.
Asked what marks the difference
in Hammerfest following the Snøhvit
gas development, John-Hermann
Pettersen’s response is 3 000 kilometres.
A taxi in the world’s northernmost
incorporated town used to average
5 000 kilometres a month. That has
jumped to 8 000 kilometres since
work on the field began.
When Mr Pettersen deposits me
outside the cultural centre a few
minutes latter, I see mayor Alf E
Jakobsen crossing the road on the
way to the same conference dinner.
Asked the same question I put
to the taxi driver, he points to fish
processor Findus – which has changed its name to Aker Seafoods and
moved to Rypefjord a few kilometres
away.
This once employed more than
1 200 people in the town, but is
now down to 120 work-years. That
means a loss of 1 100 work-years for
Hammerfest’s 10 000-strong population.
“The petroleum industry is very
welcome,” says Mr Jakobsen, and
believes the community would have
been destitute without it. Public and
private buildings were dingy and
poorly maintained.
But the local authority has now
built schools, a cultural centre, and a
new nursery school every year. The
Melkøya facility means 700-750 jobs
and NOK 155 million annually in property tax.
That income represents 17 per
cent of the council’s budget, and has
allowed it to borrow money which
can be devoted to building homes
for people who want to move to
Hammerfest.
The very first exploration well in the Barents Sea was spudded in July
1980, the year after the Storting (parliament) permitted drilling to
begin north of the 62nd parallel.
Ninety-four wells have been drilled since then, including 79 for
exploration and 15 for appraisal.
Interest has been very low at times,
with no wells in 1994-2000, 2001-05
and 2010.
However, 14 are planned for 2012
and 2013 – a record level.
One gas field – Snøhvit – came on
stream in 2007, while the Goliat oil
discovery is due to begin production
next year.
Getting down and dirty
Huge area
The Barents Sea covers about 1.4
million square kilometres, west-east
from the Norwegian Sea to Novaya
Zemlya and south-north from the
Norwegian and Russian coasts to
about 80°N. Its average depth is 230
metres.
A boundary between the
Norwegian and Russian sectors came
into force in 2011, giving Norway
jurisdiction over an additional 87 600
square kilometres.
The NPD shot seismic in the
southern part of this former area of
disputed claims last summer. It is due
to acquire a further 30 000 kilometres
of such data this year around Jan
Mayen and in the Nordland IV and V
areas of the Norwegian Sea.
Fieldwork is essential for understanding geology. These geologists and geology students
are doing just that on Hopen
Island at the south-east end of
the Svalbard archipelago in the
Barents Sea.
They are studying mudstones and sandstones laid down
on a vast alluvial plain during
the Triassic. Great river systems
originating in the Urals flowed
through here to enter the sea
via massive deltas a little to the
north-west.
Thanks to continental shelf
uplift, Hopen is now above the
waves and provides a crosssection through these ancient
sediments.
Viewed from a distance, it
is possible to pick out old river
channels in the mountainsides
and to study the changes in these
both across and along the direction of deposition.
Closer inspection shows how
the big rivers subdivided close
to the sea. Fossilised fauna and
flora reveal how the transition
from unconsolidated sediment to
bedrock developed.
The man in the background is
a botanist who joined the expedition to study Hopen’s present
plant life, but who also helped to
classify fossil flora.
Sandstones can be very good
reservoirs, with mudstones as cap
rocks. Similar rocks deposited in
the same environment are found
throughout the Barents Sea, and
commercial oil and gas discoveries have been made in them
further south.
Terje Solbakk (text and photo) and
Bjørn Anders Lundschien.
Foto: Emile Ashley
RICHTSCHNITT
Going green
The bare rock floor of a log cabin in Germany’s Eifel Hills defines, by
international agreement, the boundary between Lower and Middle
Devonian rocks throughout the world. A path signposted Richtschnitt
winds through the fertile landscape up to this building.
| Robert W Williams, text and photos
The village of Schönecken lies
in the valley of the river Nims, a
trout-rich stream which meanders through the green hills of
Rhineland-Palatinate on the western edge of Germany.
Only 1 500 people live in this
charming hamlet, located on
sedimentary rocks which produce
rich soils to sustain the area’s agriculture.
Its local bedrock is also important for deciphering the Earth’s
history at a key moment in the
evolution of the biosphere.
The fossil succession encased
in the rock strata under
Schönecken holds the key to
dating a significant event in planetary history – the beginning
of the Middle Devonian epoch
at precisely 397.5 million years
before the present.
Tinted
It was in the course of the 12-million-year Middle Devonian that the
colour green, tantamount today
to all things environmental, first
tinted the landscapes of the Earth.
This was when some species
of small, rootless liverworts and
mosses evolved into tall plants
with stiff, water-conducting This is the third article on global
boundary stratotype sections and
points, informally called "golden
spikes". These define the boundaries in the geological time scale,
which is divided into roughly 100
sections. Spread around the world,
almost all of the spikes are due to
have been fixed during 2012.
Previous articles are available at
www.npd.no/publications:
Spiking the strata (Norwegian
Continental Shelf, no 1, 2005)
Water world (Norwegian
Continental Shelf, no 2, 2008)
tissues and soil-anchoring root
networks.
In time, they became the
Earth’s first trees. Forests spread
across continents, their biomass
became steadily denser, and they
crept further inland. Combustible
carbon compounds accumulated.
The Middle Devonian saw the
very first fires burn on the planet.
The Devonian is a fitting
name for what must have been a
time of stunning green landscapes, invoking as it does the pastoral serenity of the English county
of Devon where this geological
period was first identified in the
early 19th century.
A gravel path a few hundred
metres south of the cathedral
in Schönecken leads to the sign
reading Richtschnitt – a geological
term meaning “key section” – at
the edge of the forest. The track
continues up the slope of a forested ridge.
Despite the message on the
sign, however, no rock outcrops
are to be seen. They are covered
by vegetation in most of the Eifel.
Iridescent green pastures and
dense forests are nourished by
the calcareous Devonian mudstone and fossil coral reefs which
make up the bedrock.
These rock layers are visible
only in the occasional road cut
or quarry. Pine forests, a modern
remnant of Middle Devonian
plant evolution, thwart geologists’ access to the rocks which
preserve fossils of distant cousins
of these trees.
Longest
These rocks were once mud on
the floor of a tropical sea 3 000
kilometres south of the equator
and 1 000 east of the highest and
longest mountain chain ever for-
Richtschnitt. The interior of the cabin with the Richtschnitt, exposing the boundary at the base of the Eifelian Stage which lies roughly in the
centre of the photograph.
Transition
Golden spike. This cabin protects the GSSP, or “golden spike”, which marks the base of the Eifelian Stage in the geological time scale.
med on land, the Caledonians.
Just as the collision between
India and Asia is raising the much
younger Himalayas, north-west
Europe and North America collided slowly and tortuously during
the Silurian period.
That movement raised the
Caledonian mountains, which
extended northward from the
south-eastern reaches of North
America to Greenland and northern Norway.
Devonian forests created
novel opportunities for natural
selection. Species diversity increased in marine and freshwater
habitats.
The Caledonians gave rise to
myriad lakes, rivers and streams
isolated from each other. As the
biota on far-flung volcanic islands
illustrate today, barriers to gene
dispersal turbocharge the rate of
biological evolution.
The evolutionary footprint
of the Caledonians on terrestrial
fauna can be appreciated by
examining the architecture of the
organs and four limbs of all terrestrial vertebrates (even snakes
have four limbs coded, but turned
off in their genomes).
Thanks to the Caledonians,
all people descend from a single
species of freshwater lobe-finned
Middle Devonian fish. These
mountains are imprinted in
human bones.
The Caledonians were eroded
down to a shadow of their former
glory just a few tens of millions
years after their birth. They were
a victim of the climate-controlling
effect which mountain chains
exert on atmospheric circulation
and weather systems.
Mountain chains ensure their
own destruction by increasing
the intensity of erosion of their
surfaces. As a result, they boost
the transport of material towards
lowland sedimentary basins and
continental shelves.
The first sediments deposited
on the NCS are the legacy of the
once majestic Caledonian mountains. These sediments are an
extension of the rusty red rocks
which Victorian geologists labelled the Old Red Sandstone.
Contorted crust in Norway,
the British Isles, Greenland
and the eastern USA, together
with the enormous volume of
Devonian sedimentary rocks
spread over these lands, attest tellingly to the historic immensity
of the Caledonians. These rocks
are a testimony to the colossal
power of continents in collision.
Protected by distance, the
Eifel region avoided the Silurian
mountain-building drama which
took place in slow motion beyond
its western horizon.
During the Devonian, the Eifel
was a quiet sea floor which recei-
ved only the finer-grained debris
eroded from the Caledonians.
What is now hilly farmland
and forest was then part of the
continental shelf off the eastern
shores of Euramerica, as the composite continent of the Devonian
is now called.
This ancient geographical
setting helps to understand the
elusive Richtschnitt path. The
forest trail ends in a grassy clearing overlooking the quiet, slateroofed houses of Schönecken.
Across the valley, the grey ruins of
a 12th century castle loom above
the village.
A curious log cabin stands
in the clearing. The solidly built
wooden hut seems at first glance
to be some sort of storage facility.
It is an unusual three-tiered,
floorless structure, clearly designed to follow the sloping terrain.
The rocky floor within is visible
through an iron-barred opening
in the wall.
A placard by the padlocked
entrance door explains the
building’s true purpose: to protect
a 15-metre-long shallow trench
which geologists from Frankfurt’s
Senckenberg Institute excavated
in 1982. It boldly states “Inside
this hut lurks a world attraction
for scientists.”
The Senckenberg Institute dug
the trench in order to study the
transition between sediments
deposited during the Early
Devonian and Middle Devonian
Epochs.
These rocks have worldwide
significance because a portion of
their fossil fauna, tiny teeth from
a small eel-like creature, occurs
worldwide in marine deposits.
In addition, there is no hiatus at the boundary layer here
in Schönecken. In other words,
sedimentation continued uninterrupted during the transition from
Early to Middle Devonian.
What is more, airborne volcanic ash is interspersed throughout the rock section. The ratio
of potassium to argon in the ash
indicates that its particles solidified 397.5 million years ago.
Fortunately, the rock exposure
inside the hut exists in a politically stable country with an infrastructure which allows geologists
easy access.
For all of these reasons, the
International Committee on
Stratigraphy awarded the global
boundary stratotype section and
point (GSSP), informally called the
golden spike, to the rock outcrop
in Schönecken in 1985.
The Schönecken site won the
GSSP in competition with other
candidate sites throughout the
world. This age in Earth history
will forever be called the Eifelian.
Like the castle on the other
side of the Nims valley, this little
brown cabin is also a fortress of
sorts – a fortress of shadow.
The enemy which must be
repelled is photosynthesis. The
darkness inside is keeping invading vegetation at bay.
It is protecting an outcropping of sea floor sediments that
mark the base of the Eifelian
Age, which initiated the Middle
Devonian Epoch.
The flora, fauna and landscape
of that time coloured our environment and shaped our bodies.
Middle Devonian
events:
• jawless ostracoderm fish in decline
• jawed fish increase in
diversity
• lungfish appear
• club mosses appear
• early ferns appear
• progymnosperms appear
• land arthropods diversify
• with no herbivorous land animals yet evolved, forests shaped the landscape.
Richtschnitt is a geological term meaning
“key section”.
Conodonts
Most ages of the Palaeozoic Era,
such as the Eifelian Age of the
Middle Devonian Epoch, are
defined by the earliest occurrence of various marine species
of phosphatic microfossils called
conodonts.
More than 1 500 known fossil species exist, many of which
may be different kinds of teeth
belonging to one animal. For
200 years, only the teeth of
these enigmatic animals were
found.
The body morphology of
one species came to light in
1980, when fossil impressions
of soft tissues were found in
museum specimens in Scotland,
and later in outcrops both in
Scotland and South Africa. It
was a tiny marine animal which
resembled an eel.
Schönecken Castle, originally called Clara Costa,
was built around 1230 on the river Nims. The village of Schönecken is in the foreground.
The small Devonium Museum in Waxweiler, near
Schönecken, displays an impressive collection of
fossils from the Devonian of the Eifel Hills.
Robert W Williams is a palaeontologist at the NPD. His grandfather,
Heinrich Joseph Willms, and at least
10 preceding generations, were all
born in the Eifel region on Middle
Devonian limestones.
Disappointed
on land
Hopes of finding onshore oil in Norway have sprung eternal.
Some of these tales about possible discoveries really happened,
some are uncertain and others are downright fabrications.
| Terje Solbakk, geologist, NPD
A water pipe was being laid in the
spring of 1964 to drain a stream
crossing a meadow at Vangsvik
on Senja island in northern
Norway when oil was spotted flowing from the river bank.
This discovery took teenagers
Tor Edvardt Jørgensen and Odin
Pedersen by surprise. They built a
little dam just where the oil was
emerging. It could be skimmed
off the water like cream.
The local community was
fired up, and one of the neighbours came running with a cream
separator. A large dark slick formed
on the Solberg Fjord below the
field.
Mr Jørgensen recalls that they
dipped twists of cotton in the oil,
which “burnt good and black.”
He went to sea on the Coastal
Express service and was away for
three years.
The oil on Senja was headline news in the national press.
Geologists quickly showed that
the bedrock in Vangsvik was not
the type to contain hydrocarbons,
and that this could be nothing
big.
But landowner Amandus
Hansen was convinced that oil
had been found. Samples were
sent to the Norwegian Institute of
This article builds on
interviews, systematic
gathering of clippings
from Aftenposten’s digital
web archives, microfilm
searches of Harstad
Tidende and Adresseavisen,
yearbooks and so forth.
Technology (NTH – now the
Norwegian University of Science
and Technology) in Trondheim for
analysis.
The locals in Vangsvik heard
nothing about the results. A new
sample was sent to a US laboratory and returned, allegedly with
the message that this was firstclass mineral oil.
A report also exists from the
NTH’s analysis, which cast doubt
on the sample being entirely
natural and suggested it might
have been “salted” (planted by
humans).
The quantity of oil in the sample was nevertheless small, with
only five grams of it being extractable from the five kilograms of
soil sent in.
While the NCS was opened
to exploration in 1965, four years
passed before large volumes of
offshore oil were proven. Ekofisk
in the North Sea was pronounced
commercial on 23 December
1969.
While people in northern
Norway waited excitedly for drilling to start off their shores, it
stayed below the 62nd parallel
– the northern boundary of the
North Sea – for the time being.
Great efforts were devoted to
persuading the government and
industry to get the NCS opened
above this barrier, which eventually happened in 1980.
Drilling
In the winter of 1972, Norwegian
oil company Norminol spudded
the first of four wells in the only
part of Norway with Jurassic and
Cretaceous sediments on land.
Located between Ramså and
Skarsten on the island of Andøya
close to Senja, these wells were
important in that they provided
much-needed information about
rocks on the adjacent NCS.
Coal mining had been considered in the area earlier, but
Norminol promoted its venture
as oil and gas exploration and
offered both A and B (non-voting)
shares in the company.
As early as the autumn of
1971, the newspapers were reporting oil fever in northern Norway.
Norminol’s share price shot up,
from NOK 100 to a peak of about
NOK 3 500 for a B share.
This stock was also expected
to boost local government finances. According to Harstad Tidende,
Øksnes local council was looking
for share speculators.
One of the speakers who
opposed buying the shares said
“she would be more than happy
to support a purchase if only
there had been somebody in the
local authority who could manage them”.
The council invested instead
in Bankoil, another new north
Norwegian oil company. But
Norway’s Berny Circus opted for
the Norminol stock.
Manager Liv Berny Løken
appeared on the front page of
Harstad Tidende (right) astride the
big top’s main attraction with the
derrick at Ramså behind her. The
hunt was on for oil and gas elephants.
Oslo tabloid VG reported that
shares were being handed out as
Christmas presents – and a gas
blowout in a Norminol well in
March 1972 generated more massive headlines.
But Andøya proved dry. The
blowout was probably caused
by small quantities of gas in the
bedrock. No other hydrocarbons
were present except those related
to the coal deposits.
Rights
Norminol had also heard of the oil
“discovery” in Vangsvik, and took
a closer look. Exploration rights
were negotiated with the landowners in the Senja community.
Mr Jørgensen, back home again,
was given shares and subscription
rights in Norminol by Hansen. He
sold the latter in 1972 for NOK
1 400, but still owns the stock.
Tranøy local council, which
Elephant. Circus director Liv Berny Løken bought oil shares.
(Harstad Tidende, microfilm archive)
embraces Vangsvik, wrote to the
Ministry of Industry to express
the hope that “it would receive its
share from possible oil deposits in
the authority”.
Any oil and gas revenues
should “benefit depleted council
coffers”, it claimed, and not simply
go directly to the Treasury.
News of the oil reached the
wider world, and foreign firms
are said to have enquired about
buying land in Vangsvik. Other
players also considered the pos-
sibilities of finding oil and gas on
Senja.
However, preliminary drilling
to a depth of about 12 metres
left a well which only yielded
first-class drinking water – to the
benefit of three local households.
Nor did further investigations
produce any sign of hydrocarbons. No satisfactory explanation
has been found for the Vangsvik
“oil discovery”.
That failure was not for the
want of trying by the likes of the
University of Tromsø, according
to the latter’s in-house magazine
Ottar. Where the oil came from
remains an open question.
Fraud
[1]
[4]
Stories of petroleum on land in
Norway can be found in newspaper headlines a long way back.
Some of these reports can be
regarded as jokes, fraud or the
result of geological ignorance.
In other cases, hydrocarbons
really do exist – but in such small
quantities that they are nowhere
near being interesting for commercial exploitation.
Coal can also contain hydrocarbons, and plans existed both
in the 1920s and as recently as
1946 to extract oil from shale and
coal on Andøya.
The head of the Norwegian
Geological Survey commented
that these proposals “sounded
very reasonable” when he was
interviewed on the subject by VG.
As far back as 1894, somebody
called Grønbeck acquired the
rights to oil, coal, minerals and so
forth on grazing land at Nordmela
in Andøya, where the Jurassic and
Cretaceous rocks lie.
According to the 1986 Yearbook for Andøya, a document in
this connection was registered
with the land registry during
1972, when Norminol was drilling
on Ramså.
It might be reasonable to
assume that the original agreement on coal and oil rights was
not grounded in geological
knowledge.
Unexpected
[2]
[1] Influence. A government visit to northern Norway
produced no promises of spin-offs for the region.
(Facsimile: Harstad Tidende, 31 August 1973)
[2] Oil finder. Tor Edvardt Jørgensen points to the spot
where the black liquid emerged at Vangsvik on Senja.
(Photo: Terje Solbakk)
[3] Oil in 1950. Adresseavisen reported that crude flowed
out here at Oksvold in Fosen. (Microfilm archive)
[3]
[4] Landowner. “Oil field” owner Amandus Hansen presents
crude from Vangsvik. (Facsimile: Aftenposten, 5 August 1971)
An odder source of hydrocarbons
emerged in the early 20th century
in the south Norwegian towns of
Arendal and Tvedestrand, involving a rather unexpected reservoir rock.
These volcanic diabase (dolerite) dikes actually offer a poor
home for petroleum, but tiny
cavities in the rock have allowed
small quantities of gaseous condensate to accumulate.
The diabase dikes were first
described by geologist H Suleng
in 1919. Although the condensate
has been investigated, its origin
remains an unresolved question.
However, liquids containing
hydrocarbons could have migrated through the diabase from
more porous adjacent rocks at an
earlier time.
Residual oil – known as coal
blende – is found in what geologists call the “Oslo field”, but not
in liquid form. And a Precambrian
oil basin has been described in
Hedmark north of the capital.
Crater
As a digression, it can be noted
that the Swedes have found oil on
land at several sites – including
the large Siljanring meteorite
crater in Dalarna. Hydrocarbons
issue at several points from the
surrounding fracture zones.
Eighteen-century Swedish
scientist Carl Linnaeus (von Linné)
– famed for his work on biological
classification – discovered and
described one such oil source.
Like most scientists of his day,
he was interested in all natural
phenomena and regarded geology as falling within his ambit.
Although only the Swedish
Geological Survey has recorded
his oil find, he might perhaps qualify as Scandinavia’s first petroleum geologist.
The first Norwegian to warrant such a title was probably
Gunnar Horn, who prospected for
oil in South America, Svalbard and
Russia. (See NCS 1, 2006, at www.npd.no)
Dowser
A German baron and dowser called Willy von Lepel, who turned
up in Oslo during 1924, was
rumoured to be able to find oil
and gas with the aid of mysterious
rays from a divining rod.
This initially generated minor
headlines in the media and a solid
dose of scepticism from the scientists and geologists of the day.
On the same day Mr von
Lepel was mentioned, geologist
Gunnar Holmsen explained in
Oslo daily Aftenposten why significant oil and gas could not be
found in Norway. Fellow geologist
P A Øyen repeated the message
in detail the following day.
They attributed the flow to
Hydrocarbons are
chemical compounds
comprising molecular
chains of carbon and
hydrogen atoms. Oil and
gas are hydrocarbons, and
coal usually contains these
to varying degrees. They
can also be found in peat
– decayed plant matter
used as fuel for millennia,
probably also in Norway.
Petroleum refers to all liquid
and gaseous hydrocarbons
found in a natural condition in the sub-surface, and
other substances produced
together with these.
Coal blende is a black,
brittle mineral in noncrystalline form, composed
of hydrocarbons. It was
economically important
for the government in the
days when Norway was
part of Denmark, because
it provided a key indicator
of silver in the old mines at
Kongsberg west of Oslo. If
coal blende was found in
the rock, silver could well be
nearby. Studies of this link
suggest that hydrocarbons
could have functioned as a
catalyst for precipitating the
silver.
Bubbling
Evil-smelling oil was discovered in
October 1950 bubbling up during
road works on the Oksvold farm
on the western side of Fosen near
Stavanger.
The oil apparently flowed
freely, and the story was picked
up by Trondheim daily
Adressavisen. Specialists from
the Norwegian Broadcasting
Corporation (NRK) arrived.
the buried corpse of a whale. The
story ran in the press for a few
days and people began to pay
visits to the site.
Samples were apparently sent
for analysis, but the results are
unknown. The affair soon died
down, but a relative of the oil’s
finder says that the local mood
was enthusiastic while it lasted.
Shaken, but
not stirred
Gravel
Andøya, Tranøy
The bedrock beneath the Norwegian continental shelf does not just
lie there quietly. Tremors shake it up occasionally – and one was even
generated by oil and gas production.
Meløy
| Astri Sivertsen
Oksvoll,
Bjugn
t
Valsøyfjorden, Halsa
Oslofelte
Mention can also be made of
another reported – but not investigated – oil find during road
building in 1953 on the Valsøy
Fjord in Halsa local authority near
Kristiansund.
Located at a depth of four
metres in a gravel pit, this discovery received some mention in
such newspapers as Aftenposten.
A clergyman by the name of
Lund from Sarpsborg south of
Oslo bought land on the north
Norwegian coast to search for oil,
according to the Geo magazine in
1994.
This followed a vision that a
major oil strike would be made
in Nordland county. Gas seepages
have been reported but not
investigated in other parts of this
Helgeland coast.
Many people have enjoyed
playing practical jokes, not least
with geologists. A man claimed
in 1972 to have an oil seep on
his land at Evenes near Senja in
Nordland.
He had allegedly got out
a teaspoon of oil in the 1920s,
which burnt well. VG featured
the story prominently, with the
“oil field” owner dressed up as a
sheikh.
All that can be said for sure
about these stories is that, even
if traces of hydrocarbons are to
be found on land in Norway,
the volumes concerned will be
modest.
Opportunities to generate
petroleum and preserve it in suitable reservoirs existed during
the geological past, but later
uplift and erosion have largely
eradicated these rocks.
The last word can be left to
Mr Øyen in his Aftenposten article
of 11 October 1924, which concludes: “The southern [and northern]
part of our country is richer terrain for the theoretical geologist
than for the practical economist.”
100 km
Arendal/Tvedestrand
Norwegian geology.
An overview of Norway’s geology from the Norwegian Geological
Survey with sites mentioned in the article. The rocks targeted by oil
explorers on the NCS are generally younger than those found on land.
Younger sediments are found in only one location on the mainland.
The really major earthquakes happen in parts of the planet where
continental plates are tearing
apart or colliding, and the massive energy they release can be
felt worldwide.
Norway lies in a passive
region of the Earth’s crust, but has
a little more natural movement
than might be expected. That
can probably be attributed to
the after-effects of the Ice Age,
explains NPD geologist Fridtjof
Riis.
The most active Norwegian
earthquake zone is the Møre
coast north of Bergen, where tremors normally register three or
four on the Richter Scale. These
can be felt by people.
Crustal movements in western
Norway and on the NCS normally
occur 10-20 kilometres down.
They are not affected by what
happens in the shallower sedimentary layers, says Mr Riis.
He took part in the Neonor
project, which studied tensions in
the crust and earthquake activity
on the NCS after the last Ice Age.
Its findings helped in planning
major offshore developments.
Running from 1997-99, this
work was led by the Geological
Survey of Norway in cooperation
with the NPD, Norsar and the
Norwegian Mapping Authority.
Asked whether oil and gas
production can unleash an
earthquake, Mr Riis says that this
is not always easy to demonstrate.
“But it’s not inconceivable
that such output might build up
an additional stress in some cases
which could be enough to release
natural tensions in the crust. Such
tremors wouldn’t be strong on
the NCS, since natural stresses
aren’t high there.”
A good deal of material has
been taken from some of the old
fields in the North Sea over the
years, with about 4.1 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) removed from Statfjord alone.
According to the 2012 edition
of Facts about the Norwegian
petroleum sector, more than 35.6
billion boe have been produced
from the NCS.
If output in the UK sector is
added, the total is around 62.5
billion boe. This volume would
cover the whole city of Bergen –
about 400 square kilometres – to
a depth of 20 metres.
Many people have wondered
whether the extraction of such
volumes could cause earthquakes,
and the short answer from Mr Riis
is that some risk does exist.
To assess its size, information
must be available not only about
natural tension in the crust but
also on what happens in reservoirs when oil and gas are recovered.
Injection
Large volumes of gas and liquids
are produced from the NCS.
Water is usually injected into the
reservoirs on most oil fields to
increase pressure and thereby get
out more crude.
In such cases, the volume
removed is wholly or partly replaced by injection water. But this
method does not normally get
used on pure gas fields.
Production from the latter is
replaced by natural groundwater
seeping into the reservoir. This
reduces the pressure and evens it
out over time, explains NPD reservoir engineer Ole Svein Krakstad.
“Aquifers are present on
Statfjord, Troll and Gullfaks,” he
says. “Pressure in the last of these
fields is almost higher than it was
originally because so much water
has been injected.”
Nevertheless, it is important
that movements in reservoirs
are carefully monitored to avoid
sudden pressure drops and big
pressure differentials. This is done
with measuring devices down the
well or on the seabed.
Seabed subsidence has been
experienced on fields with a chalk
reservoir, such as Ekofisk, Eldfisk
or Valhall in the Norwegian North
Sea. The chalk is compressed as
the hydrocarbons flow out.
That processes causes microtremors, says Mr Riis. These can
Landslide
Tremors. Earthquake activity exceeding two on the Richter scale. Data from 2001. (Illustration: University of Bergen)
be measured by seismometers
but not felt by people. Such subsidence does not occur in the
sandstone reservoirs which form
most NCS fields.
the USA, depends on this method.
“The injection processes must
be carefully monitored because of the threat of leaks,” Mr Riis
emphasises.
Investigated
Dimensioned
An earthquake measuring three
on the Richter Scale occurred
during May 2001 in the Ekofisk
area, and was thoroughly investigated by operator ConocoPhillips.
The company concluded that
stresses built up in shallow strata
through reservoir compression
were released when injection
water leaked by mistake into
the overlying shale, rendering it
unstable.
High-pressure injection causes fracturing (fracking), and is
done in some less permeable
reservoirs to boost flow. Shale gas
production, now widespread in
Although the risk of earthquakes
on the NCS is slight, each oil and
gas field must be assessed individually before development and
all installations dimensioned to
cope with crustal movements.
“Norwegian offshore facilities
are designed to handle a 10 000year earthquake,” reports Arne
Kvitrud, principal engineer in
structural safety at the Petroleum
Safety Authority Norway.
Requirements for withstanding earth tremors were incorporated in Norway’s regulations for
supporting structures in 1984, he
explains. They had been part of
the guidelines since 1980.
The big concrete platforms
on Statfjord were vulnerable to
earthquake loads, particularly at
the transition between shaft and
topsides, because the latter were
big and heavy.
Based on statistics from
observed quakes and the acceleration they generate, specifications have been developed for
the size of horizontal and vertical
motion which the structures can
absorb.
“Such requirements are country-specific, and ours are stricter
than in many places,” Mr Kvitrud
says. “They often lie between the
1 000- and 5 000-year earthquakes.”
A massive submarine landslide
occurred about 8 100 years ago
on Storegga off the Møre coast in
the Norwegian Sea, involving an
area the size of Iceland.
Located in 300-2 500 metres
of water, the slump generated
a 10-metre-high tsunami which
washed over the coast. Such huge
displacements are often unleashed
by earthquakes.
The Ormen Lange gas field
lies quite close to the edge of the
slide, and extensive surveys were
needed to identify the threat of
further seabed instability before a
development could be approved.
“Development operator Hydro
spent tens of millions of kroner
to investigate the earthquake
risk on Ormen Lange,” says Ove
T Gudmestad, professor of construction and material technology
at the University of Stavanger.
The slide was caused by
stresses set up when the glaciers
receded at the end of the Ice Age,
and the studies showed that no
further danger existed.
According to Prof Gudmestad,
ConocoPhillips has also spent
huge sums on identifying what
unleashed the 2001 earth tremor
on Ekofisk.
“I don’t know of any other
country where the oil industry has
taken responsibility for investigating such events,” he says.
Earthquakes caused by
human activity are a hot topic at
the moment, particularly in relation to shale gas production in
the USA.
Prof Gudmestad points to
cases where gas production on
land has unleashed earthquakes,
both in France and Uzbekistan. And construction of a
geothermal power station in
Switzerland was halted a few
years ago because water injection
had caused tremors.
“But there’s no reason to cry
wolf in Norway,” he emphasises.
“Nothing suggests that anything
of this kind could happen there.”
Registering earthquakes globally
One of the first sights to greet visitors who enter the NPD’s new
building in Stavanger is a seismometer with two associated flat
panel displays.
Installed when these offices were occupied just over a year
ago, the device records seismic activity across the planet and
forms part of a global network of such monitoring instruments.
Data are transmitted continuously to the earthquake station
in Bergen, and both visitors and employees can follow movements in the Earth’s crust on the two displays.
A GPS transmitter installed on the roof helps to locate the
epicentre of a quake accurately at the same moment that signals from the tremor are sent to the earthquake centre.
The NPD’s seismometer forms part of a monitoring system
which is not least important for the safety of people and installations on the NCS.
Tying it
all together
The many and very varied users of the seas off Norway secured a new
information tool in June. That was when the Barentswatch web portal
became available, currently with about 100 services.
| Bjørn Rasen
Monitoring and information systems in the web portal extend from the North Pole to Denmark in the south,
Greenland to the west and Novaya Zemlya in the east. (Illustration: Barentswatch)
This gateway represents a pioneering project which assembles all
data available to the Norwegian
government on the country’s
coastal and sea areas, and makes
them readily available to all.
No less than 27 administrative
agencies – including the NPD –
and research institutes have contributed to providing users with a
more unified picture.
The work has been led by the
Norwegian Coastal Administration.
At present, the www.barentswatch.no site is in Norwegian
only, but an English version will
be launched later this year.
“Barentswatch fulfils a need
in our modern sea and coastal
administration by communicating
relevant information and making
sure it reaches those who need
it,” says Lisbeth Berg-Hansen, the
minister of fisheries and coastal
affairs.
And foreign minister Jonas
Gahr Støre declared at the official
inauguration in Tromsø on 30 May
that the portal represents “a milestone in our commitment to the
far north”.
He noted that the starting
point was the government’s strategy for this region, launched in
December 2006. “The vision was
to put the Barents Sea plus more
on the computer display.
“I think safety at sea will be
enhanced now that we’ve got an
efficient instrument for exchanging information and establishing
a shared picture of conditions.”
Maps
Barentswatch gives emphasis to
activity maps from the various
sectors, which can be created as
a team effort to meet user requirements.
Combining charts of fisheries
and seismic surveying, for instan-
ce, will hopefully help to provide
a better overview of and communication on these activities than
before.
Such maps can then be combined with weather data, ship’s
routes and so forth. More realtime information – drawn from
such sources as the automatic
identification system (AIS) for
tracking ships at sea – will eventually be included in the service.
The portal also contains text
materials such as articles, reports
and research results, which have
been drawn from many sources.
Six of these were included
at the opening: climate and the
environment, maritime transport,
marine resources, law of the sea,
oil and gas, and fisheries and
aquaculture.
Coverage in Barentswatch is
much wider than its name suggests. Its monitoring and information systems extend from the
North Pole to Denmark in the
south, Greenland to the west and
Novaya Zemlya in the east.
Protected
In addition to serving as an information portal, Barentswatch will
contain a password-protected
section which remains to be
finalised. This operative system
will be available to Norwegian
government agencies with a maritime responsibility.
“A streamlined operational
information flow will ensure that
critical data reach the agencies
which need it at the right time,”
say the developers.
Preferred
An acknowledged challenge for
Barentswatch is to become a
preferred information source, but
project manager Frode Kjersem
believes the starting point is
good.
“We’ll be developing completely new information services
both right now and in the longer
perspective, and we’ll be using
the latest technology to ensure
that they all work well.”
He notes that Barentswatch
has characteristics which distinguish it from other web portals, including its geographical
coverage.
The portal also presents services which contain virtually
real-time data, and provides opportunities to combine information
from different agencies and institutions.
According to Mr Kjersem,
the latter ability is a user-driven development. Services in
Barentswatch are both defined by
its users and many partners and
developed with their assistance.
An app for facts about
the Norwegian petroleum sector
is being launched for people on the go.
(Illustration: Applaud)
New way to get the facts
An app for mobile phones is being launched by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy (MPE) and the NPD at the
ONS oil show in Stavanger during August.
It will give users access to data from the NPD’s fact
pages and map, including fields, production licences,
companies, production and active exploration wells.
This will be supplemented by news stories from the
MPE and the NPD, while the map function shows fields
and active exploration wells all linked to relevant background information.
In addition to a built-in search function, the app contains an analysis section which allows data to be filtered
and sorted before being stored as personal favourites.
That will make it easier to update the information
later, and the analysis section also allows the user to generate graphs.
Professionals on the go are the primary target group
for the app. A native version is being developed for the
iPhone, and it will also be made available for Android and
Windows phones.
The user can choose between Norwegian and English
versions of the app, which is being developed in cooperation with the Applaud company.
ISSN: 1504-2065
BI.70.341.12
PRIORITAIRE
PAR AVION
Porto betalt
ved
innleveringen
P.P.
Norge/
Norvège
B-blad
Return address:
Returadresse:
Norwegian
Petroleum Directorate
Oljedirektoratet,
Postboks
P O Box 600,
NO-4003
Stavanger, Norway
600, NO-4003
Stavanger
Insisting that oil in the
giant Troll field should be
developed has created
hundreds of billions of
kroner in added value.
A special report tells the tale.
A J O U R N A L F R O M T H E N O R W E G I A N P E T R O L EU M D I R E CTO R AT E
N O 2 - 2 012

Insisting that oil in the giant Troll field should be developed has

Transcription

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