 | |
| Industry | Petroleum |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1965 |
| Defunct | 2007 |
| Fate | Merger |
| Successor | StatoilHydro |
| Headquarters | Oslo, Norway |
| Products | Petroleum Natural gas |
| Parent | Norsk Hydro |
Hydro Oil & Gas is a defunct division of Norsk Hydro that operated within the oil and gas industry. On October 1, 2007 it merged with Statoil to form the new corporation StatoilHydro .
Hydro's main operations in petroleum were on the Norwegian continental shelf, but also operates in Angola, Canada, Russia and Libya. Hydro was the operator of 13 oil fields and had a production of 563,000 barrels of oil equivalents.
Hydro also operated gas stations in Sweden under the brand name Hydro and operates in Norway and Denmark with the name HydroTexaco in joint venture with Chevron. In 2006 there were 460 stations in Norway and 550 in Denmark. Also the brands Uno-X and Rema Bensin were operated by this venture.
In 1965 Hydro joined Elf Aquitaine and six other French companies to form Petronord to perform search for oil and gas in the North Sea. Hydro soon became a large company in the North Sea petroleum industry, and also became operator of a number of fields, the first being Oseberg.
The center-right government under prime minister Per Borten increased the Norwegians States ownership in Hydro to 51% in 1971. This was done under the aegis of establishing a national oil company for Norway. The next year the Labour party won the general election. As a result of this in a unanimous decision in the Storting later that year, Statoil was established as the official national oil company for Norway. Despite this the Norwegian state kept its shares and stakeholder majority in Hydro.
Hydro Oil & Gas was part of a three-company arrangement regarding the extraction of oil on the Norwegian continental shelf. The other parts of this arrangement were Statoil and Saga Petroleum. These companies were given preferential treatment by the Norwegian government in the distribution of oil & gas operating licenses on the Norwegian continental shelf. This preferential treatment largely favored Statoil in the 1970s, but this changed to some degree when Hydro was awarded an operating license in the highly coveted Troll-field. [1] The Troll-field was highly profitable for Hydro and helped finance Hydro's operations during the financial turbulence it experienced during the late 1980s. Hydro's less than stellar financial performance during the late 1980s, Hydro CEO Egil Myklebust steered the company towards a policy of consolidating their business around three core sectors. These sectors were production of oil and gas, metals (especially aluminium) and agriculture. [2] In pursuing this strategy Hydro started to consolidate the corporations key focus area's by selling out assets that didn't belong in the three core sectors and acquiring assets that strengthened them. [2]
Hydro acquired in the late 1980s the Mobil service stations in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, changing their name to Hydro. In 1995 Hydro merged its stations in Norway and Denmark with the Texaco, creating the joint venture HydroTexaco. The service station chain was sold in 2006 to Reitangruppen and the stations changed name to YX Energi. In 1999 Hydro acquired Norway's third largest petroleum company Saga Petroleum, who had major upstream operations primarily in Norway and the United Kingdom. The British operations were later sold. This acquisition marked the end of the three-company arrangement and was thus seen as politically controversial at the time. Politicians from especially the Norwegian Conservative party reacted to the partly state-owned company acquiring a wholly private company without the approval from Norwegian regulators. [3] The Saga acquisition proved in time to be a sound investment on Hydro's part. Hydro has bought Saga at a time when the Oil price was at one of its lowest points during the 1990s and the consistent rise in the Oil price ensured steady profits from the investment.
The merger proposal with Statoil was announced in December 2006. [4] Under the rules of the EEA the merger was approved by the European Union on May 3, 2007 [5] and by the Norwegian Parliament on June 8, 2007. [6] The Norwegian Government, the biggest shareholder in both Statoil and Norsk Hydro, holds 62.5% of the company. [7] Jens Stoltenberg, the Prime Minister of Norway commented that he views the merger as "the start of a new era. We are creating a global energy company and strengthening Norway's oil and gas industry." [8]
The economy of Norway is a highly developed mixed economy with state-ownership in strategic areas. Although sensitive to global business cycles, the economy of Norway has shown robust growth since the start of the industrial era. The country has a very high standard of living compared with other European countries, and a strongly integrated welfare system. Norway's modern manufacturing and welfare system rely on a financial reserve produced by exploitation of natural resources, particularly North Sea oil.
Statoil ASA was a Norwegian petroleum company established in 1972. It merged with the oil and gas division of Norsk Hydro in 2007 and was known as StatoilHydro until 2009, when the name was changed back to Statoil ASA. The brand Statoil was retained as a chain of fuel stations owned by StatoilHydro. Statoil was the largest petroleum company in the Nordic countries. In the 2013 Fortune 500, Statoil was ranked as the 39th -largest company in the world. While Statoil was listed on both the Oslo Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange, the Norwegian state still held majority ownership, with 64%. The company's headquarters are located in Norway's oil capital Stavanger. The name Statoil was a truncated form of the State's oil (company).
Norsk Hydro ASA is a Norwegian aluminium and renewable energy company, headquartered in Oslo. It is one of the largest aluminium companies worldwide. It has operations in some 50 countries around the world and is active on all continents. The Norwegian state owns 34.3% of the company through the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries. A further 6.5% is owned by Folketrygdfond, which administers the Government Pension Fund of Norway. Norsk Hydro employs approximately 35,000 people. Hilde Merete Aasheim has been the CEO since May, 2019.
Eivind Kristofer Reiten is a Norwegian economist, corporate officer and politician for the Centre Party. He served as Minister of Fisheries from 1985-1986 and Minister of Petroleum and Energy from 1989-1990, before entering a career in business. Reiten served as the Director General (CEO) of Norsk Hydro between 2001 and 2009, after which he took up the chairmanship of Norske Skog. Eivind Reiten was also Chairman of StatoilHydro for four days until he resigned from his position after Norsk Hydro had been accused of corruption.
Bristow Norway AS is a Norwegian helicopter company that transports crew to oil installations in the North Sea. It has headquarters in Stavanger and has additional operations out of Bergen, Florø, and Hammerfest. The company operates a fleet of 24 Sikorsky S92 helicopters and has 420 employees.
Lufttransport is a Norwegian helicopter and fixed-wing airline that operates primarily air ambulance helicopters and planes for the Norwegian and Swedish governments. In addition the airline offers services including surveillance for the Norwegian Coast Guard, transport of ship pilots and scheduled air transport in the Norwegian territory of Svalbard.
YX Energi, formerly known as Hydro Texaco, is a Norwegian and Danish gas station chain formed after the merge of the Hydro and Texaco gas station chains in 1995. In 2006 the company was bought by Reitangruppen and incorporated into their chain including the implementation of 7-Eleven brand on the service stations. Uno-X and Rema Bensin are low-cost brand names of YX.
Saga Petroleum ASA was a Norwegian upstream petroleum company established in 1972 that was acquired by Norsk Hydro in 1999. In October 2007 it was made part of Statoil. The company was the only fully private oil company in Norway. It had partial ownership of 60 oil field licenses and was operator of 18. Saga had an international profile, including major operations on the British continental shelf as well as minor operations in Angola, Indonesia, Libya and Namibia.
State's Direct Financial Interest (SDFI) is a portfolio of the Norwegian government's directly owned exploration and production licenses for petroleum and natural gas on the Norwegian continental shelf. The Norwegian government-owned company Petoro has managed the SDFI portfolio since 2001.
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.
Equinor ASA is a Norwegian state-owned multinational energy company headquartered in Stavanger. 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. As of 2021, the company has 21,126 employees.
Hydro was a chain of fuel stations throughout Sweden owned by Statoil. The chain had more than 500 stations, as well as some unmanned Uno-X stations. The company also operated in retailing natural gas, electricity and heating oil.
Uno-X is a chain of unmanned fuel stations throughout Norway and Denmark. It is operated as the low-cost section of YX Energi. The chain was originally created as a low cost chain in Denmark in the late 1950s. The rights to use the name in Sweden were sold to Britain's Burmah Oil. In 1991 Norsk Hydro acquired the 330 outlets of the Danish operation and five years later it bought the Swedish Uno-X chain from Burmah.
Thorleif Enger is a Norwegian businessperson and was Chief Executive Officer of Yara International. Enger was educated at the University of Colorado where he earned his PhD in Structural Engineering. He worked for Royal Dutch Shell until 1973, after which he moved to Norway to work for Norsk Hydro. He was director of the Oseberg oil field 1982–86, and from then until 1996 was president of the exploration and production division. He was then executive vice president of Hydro Oil and Gas until 1999, when he became executive vice president of Hydro Agri, and when this division was demerged to create Yara in 2004 he became its CEO. He announced his retirement in September 2008. Enger has been president of the International Fertilizer Industry Association, and has been a chairman or non-executive director of several boards, including Telenor, Spring Energy, HitecVision, and Marine Harvest. In 2010, Kapital named him one of the top ten business leaders in Norway after World War II.
Ole Hartvig Nissen was a Norwegian philologist and educator. He founded Nissen's Girls' School in Christiania in 1849. In 1865 he became director-general in the Ministry of Education, while remaining one of three joint headmasters of Nissen's Girls' School until 1872. In 1873 he was appointed to the prestigious position as rector of Oslo Cathedral School.
Braathens Helikopter A/S was a Norwegian helicopter airline based at Stavanger Airport and Bergen Airport. It used a fleet of seven Aérospatiale Super Pumas to serve offshore oil platforms in the North Sea. The customers were Amoco, BP, Norsk Hydro, Phillips Petroleum and Statoil, serving their oil fields Ekofisk, Oseberg, Gullfaks, Veslefrikk, Valhall, Ula and Gyda. Braathens Helikopter operated from 1989 to 1993, after which it was sold to and merged with the main competitor, Helikopter Service. Braathens Helikopter was owned by Ludvig G. Braathens Rederi and was a sister company of the airline Braathens SAFE.
Grane is an offshore oil field in the North Sea located 185 km (115 mi) west of the city of Haugesund on the western coast of Norway. It is Norway's first heavy crude oil production field and Statoil's largest heavy oil field in the Norwegian continental shelf. The oil from the field, located in Block 25/11 is transported to Sture terminal via Grane oil pipeline. The injection gas is imported to Grane oil field from the Heimdal, located just north the field.
Heimdal is an offshore natural gas field in the North Sea located 212 kilometres (132 mi) northwest of the Stavanger, Norway. Heimdal serves as a connection hub for processing and distribution of natural gas from satellite fields.
Vale is an offshore gas field in the North Sea located 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) north of the Heimdal gas field. The depth of the water in the field area is 115 metres (377 ft). Vale is considered a satellite to Heimdal field and is connected to it by a pipeline. Estimated reserves at Vale stand at 2.5 billion cubic metres of natural gas and 21 million barrels (3,300,000 m3) of gas condensate. Vale gas field is expected to produce 1.6 million cubic metres per day of natural gas and 2,600 barrels per day (410 m3/d) of condensate.
Libya–Norway relations are the bilateral and diplomatic relations between Libya and Norway. While neither country has an embassy in the other—Libya has its closest embassy in Stockholm, whereas Norway has an embassy in Cairo—the economic relations have been more significant. Notably, Norway also took part in the bombing campaign against Libya in 2011.
