Norway wants Shell’s Ormen Lange decision

OSLO: Norway expects Royal Dutch Shell Plc to go forward with a shelved project to boost recovery of natural gas at the Ormen Lange field and warned it will start pushing the company for progress from next year.

“A clear message to Shell is that we expect that it seizes the opportunities that exist at Ormen Lange and comes to a decision to take this forwards,” said Bente Nyland, the head of the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD), here, on Wednesday.

“There are a lot of resources at Ormen and we have to get them out.”

Norway wants a decision on an offshore compression project, which was postponed in 2014 as one of the first victims of an industry-wide drive to cut spending and costs.

It will start to be “urgent” to proceed with the project in the next two years, said Nyland. Production at the Norwegian Sea field, which supplies about 20 per cent of the United Kingdom’s gas consumption, had been falling as the pressure in the reservoir dropped, said the NPD.

As oil and gas firms operating in Norway are preparing for a third year of investment cuts, authorities have warned them to not scrap viable projects or put time-critical resources at risk that could be lost because infrastructure disappears or geological conditions change.

Nyland has previously said Norway doesn’t want companies that “skim the cream”.

Shell is expanding its terminal at Nyhamna to allow it to process gas from other fields and is also installing two onshore compressors to boost recovery from Ormen Lange. The company is working on the offshore compression project internally and had previously said a concept decision could be made next year.

“It is still too early to conclude if a major project to increase recovery beyond onshore compression will materialise,” said Kitty Eide, a spokesman for Shell. Bloomberg