Refineries
Mongstad, Norway's largest oil refinery, opened in 1975.
The history of the petroleum industry in Norway is the most significant part of Norway's economic history, and significant across that of Europe's petroleum industry.
A letter dated 25 February 1958 from the Geological Survey of Norway to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the chances of finding oil off the Norwegian coastline were negligible.[ citation needed ]
In May 1963, Norway declared that any oil found off its coast would belong to Norway. In March 1965, the boundaries of oil exploration were divided along the median line across the North Sea. In April 1965 Norway opened the first round of exploration drilling licences, with 22 in 78 areas.[ citation needed ]
Esso received three exploration drilling licences in the Norwegian continental shelf and began drilling on 19 July 1966. The first oil was found by Esso in 1967 in the second well that Esso drilled, known as 25/11-1; this became the Balder oil field. Esso began drilling on 17 November 1969 with the Ocean Viking platform, and discovered a large oil field on 24 December 1969 in the Chalk Group Unit 6, of Danian geological age; the well, 2/4-2, was the 34th oil well explored in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea; by this time over 200 exploration oil wells had been drilled in the North Sea. The discovery of oil in December 1969 [1] was featured in an eight-part 2018 docudrama television series on NRK entitled Lykkeland . Norway announced the discovery of a large oil field on 2 June 1970.
A United Nations conference in 1973, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, extended the area for oil exploration northwards into the Barents Sea.[ citation needed ]
Production from the oil field discovered in December 1969 began on 15 June 1971; this was the first production of North Sea oil. Norway's state-owned oil production company was formed in 1972. The oil industry of Norway would be centred in Stavanger.
Production in the Norwegian Sea began in 1993, and that in the Barents Sea began in 2007.
Mongstad, Norway's largest oil refinery, opened in 1975.
A pipeline was laid across the North Sea southwards to Germany; divers working on the pipe would need up to 70 days of decompression, and suffered permanent physical injury.
A sovereign wealth fund, the Oil Fund and part of the Government Pension Fund of Norway, was started in 1990. The petroleum industry in Norway is regulated by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy.
The Barents Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia and divided between Norwegian and Russian territorial waters. It was known earlier among Russians as the Northern Sea, Pomorsky Sea or Murman Sea ; the current name of the sea is after the historical Dutch navigator Willem Barentsz.
Hydrocarbon exploration is the search by petroleum geologists and geophysicists for deposits of hydrocarbons, particularly petroleum and natural gas, in the Earth's crust using petroleum geology.
North Sea oil is a mixture of hydrocarbons, comprising liquid petroleum and natural gas, produced from petroleum reservoirs beneath the North Sea.
Oseberg is an offshore oil field with a gas cap in the North Sea located 140 km (87 mi) northwest of the city of Bergen on the southwestern coast of Norway. The field, which is 25 km long by 7 km wide, was discovered in 1979 and its development is known to be one of the significant milestones in emergence of Norway's independent oil and gas industry. The Oseberg field was named after Oseberg ship, one of Norway's most significant archeological discoveries. The ancient Viking ship from the early 9th century was discovered in a 1904 historical excavation of a burial mound at the Oseberg Farm, south of Oslo.
DNO ASA is a Norwegian oil and gas operator focused on the Middle East and the North Sea. Founded in 1971 and listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange, the Company holds stakes in onshore and offshore licenses at various stages of exploration, development and production in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, Norway, the United Kingdom and Yemen.
Rocksource was a technology-based exploration and production petroleum company listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The company was established as a partnership between Norwegian entrepreneurs, oil industry professionals and academics, Jonny Hesthammer and John Howell from the University of Bergen. The company focused on two areas. For exploration the company developed algorithms for the processing of Controlled Source Electromagnetic (CSEM) data which were used as part of an integrated exploration process. Secondly the company successfully exported "North Sea style" reservoir management techniques to the highly conservative onshore gas fields of east Texas where it bought old oil and gas fields and revitalized them.
Vetco was a British oilfield service company that was established in July 2004 and operated through its subsidiaries Vetco Gray and Vetco Aibel AS. Vetco was the result of a consortium consisting of the private equity firms Candover, 3i and JP Morgan Partners, which took over ABB's oil and gas division, ABB Offshore Systems. These companies have served the upstream oil and gas industry since 1903 and are suppliers of products, systems, and services for onshore and offshore drilling. Vetco was headquartered in London UK, and employed over 10,000 people in more than 30 countries worldwide.
Exploration for petroleum in the Arctic is expensive and challenging both technically and logistically. In the offshore, sea ice can be a major factor. There have been many discoveries of oil and gas in the several Arctic basins that have seen extensive exploration over past decades but distance from existing infrastructure has often deterred development. Development and production operations in the Arctic offshore as a result of exploration have been limited, with the exception of the Barents and Norwegian seas. In Alaska, exploration subsequent to the discovery of the Prudhoe Bay oilfield has focussed on the onshore and shallow coastal waters.
Lundin Energy was an independent oil and gas exploration and production company formed from Lundin Oil in 2001 and based in Sweden with focus on operations in Norway.
Türkiye Petrolleri Anonim Ortaklığı (TPAO) was founded in 1954 by Law No. 6327 with the responsibility of being involved in hydrocarbon exploration, drilling, production, refinery and marketing activities of oil and gas in Turkey as the national company.
Norway is a large energy producer, and one of the world's largest exporters of oil. Most of the electricity in the country is produced by hydroelectricity. Norway is one of the leading countries in the electrification of its transport sector, with the largest fleet of electric vehicles per capita in the world.
Canada's early petroleum discoveries took place near population centres or along lines of penetration into the frontier.
Equinor ASA is a Norwegian state-owned multinational energy company headquartered in Stavanger, Norway. It is primarily a petroleum company operating in 36 countries with additional investments in renewable energy. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, Equinor was ranked as the 169th-largest public company in the world. In 2023, the company was ranked 52nd in the same list. As of 2021, the company has 21,126 employees.
Petroleum industry in Guyana is rapidly evolving. Guyana has emerged as one of the newest petroleum producing regions in the world, achieving its first commercial grade crude oil draw in December 2019. Crude oil is sent abroad for refining.
The mineral industry does not play a significant role in the economy of São Tomé and Príncipe.
Rockhopper Exploration PLC is an oil and gas exploration company headquartered in Salisbury, Wiltshire, United Kingdom. It owns offshore exploration and production licences in the North Falkland Basin in the waters north of the Falkland Islands.
Rex International Holding is an oil and gas company headquartered in Singapore and listed on the Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Limited’s Mainboard. The company was publicly listed on 31 July 2013 on Singapore Exchange's secondary board Catalist and started trading on the Singapore Exchange's Mainboard on 8 March 2022.
The oil industry in Scotland was largely created upon the discovery of North Sea oil. The country is one of the world’s leading oil producers, and in 2020, oil and gas contributed £13.8 billion to the Scottish economy and supported 100,000 jobs. Commercial extraction of oil on the shores of the North Sea dates back to 1851, when James Young retorted oil from torbanite mined in the Midland Valley of Scotland.
