Minerals Report - International Seabed Authority

about 300 metres deep. She reported that happily all the major discoveries
occur along the median line, working in Norway’s favour.
Dr. Nyland said that from 16 licensing rounds, 264 licenses have been
awarded, with 185 of these licenses still active. She said that the Norwegian
continental shelf is divided into quadrants, and that each quadrant comprises
12 blocks covering 15 minutes of latitude and 20 minutes of longitude. She
said that the typical North Sea block has an average area of between 500 to
600 square kilometres, decreasing in a northerly direction.
Dr. Nyland said that the total resource potential offshore Norway is
13.2 billion cubic metres of oil equivalent, with an almost fifty/fifty share
between oil and gas. She said that most of the oil is in the North Sea (37 and
28 per cent respectively) with more gas in the Norwegian deep-sea.
With regard to production, Dr. Nyland said that oil and gas
production has increased through the years. With regard to oil, Dr. Nyland
said that production has peaked and presently amounts to almost 3 million
barrels of oil per day, ranking Norway as the seventh largest oil producer in
the world, and the second largest exporter. She said that only seven per cent
of the oil produced satisfies domestic demand. She said that this is the case
because Norway has a lot of water that is used to generate electricity.
In terms of natural gas production, Dr. Nyland said that this too has
been increasing, and that Norway is among the ten largest producers of this
commodity in the world. She also said that most of the gas is exported to
Europe. She said that a large proportion of the gas produced is injected into
the petroleum reservoirs to enhance oil recovery. She said that natural gas
production in 1999 amounted to 227 million cubic metres of oil equivalent.
She said that Norwegian forecasts are that it has seventeen years of oil
production left, and ninety-three years of gas production.
She said that the tax rate consists of a 28 per cent corporate tax and a
50 per cent special petroleum tax. She said that Norway’s income from oil
and gas in 1999 was 5.7 billion dollars. She said that there is a royalty on
production related to some of the older oil fields on the order of 8 to 60 per
cent of the gross production value. She said that after the initial exploration
INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY 805