NORWAY STRIKE COULD SHUT GIANT SVERDRUP OILFIELD

Norway’s Johan Sverdrup oilfield, the North Sea’s largest with an output capacity of up to 470,000 barrels of oil per day, will have to close down production unless a strike among workers ends by Oct. 14, operator Equinor said on Wednesday. A shutdown at Sverdrup would more than double the existing outage from the ongoing strike by the Lederne union, taking the total capacity cut to around 800,000 barrels of oil equivalents per day. The price of North Sea oil rose by around US15 cents to over US$ 42 a barrel by 1910 GMT after news of the potential shutdown, Refinitiv data showed. Some 43 members of the Lederne labour union went on strike at the Sverdrup field last week, but Equinor was able to maintain output with its remaining staff, the company said at the time.