Norway is producing oil and gas faster than the industry is finding new resources, increasing the risk of a steep decline after 2030, according to a new report from the Norwegian Offshore Directorate.
The warning comes despite strong current activity. Norwegian oil production reached its highest level since 2009 last year, while petroleum investment in 2026 is estimated at approximately $25 billion.
Much of today’s spending supports projects and discoveries made years ago. Maintaining production beyond this decade will require more exploration, faster development of existing discoveries and continued investment in mature fields and infrastructure.
The problem is not that Norway is running out of petroleum. It is that too much of the remaining resource base is either undiscovered or insufficiently mature to replace declining production from today’s largest fields.
Production Could Fall Sharply After 2030
The Norwegian Offshore Directorate expects production to remain close to current levels until the end of the 2020s before beginning to decline.
By 2035, total petroleum production is projected to fall to around 160 million standard cubic meters of oil equivalent. That corresponds to approximately 1 billion barrels of oil equivalent annually, or 2.76 million boepd.
The Directorate has also developed three scenarios through 2050. These are not forecasts, but illustrations of how different levels of exploration, investment and technological development could shape the future of the Norwegian Continental Shelf.
In the High scenario, robust exploration, more discoveries and rapid technological development maintain production at around 65% of today’s level in 2050.
In the Low scenario, weaker investment and limited exploration cause activity to contract rapidly, leaving production at only around 5% of today’s level.
Using the same oil and gas prices, the Directorate estimates a net-present-value gap of approximately $344 billion between the High and Low scenarios. When higher prices are applied to High and lower prices to Low, the gap increases to approximately $890 billion.
Norway Still Has Around 44 Billion Boe Remaining
Norway is not short of geological potential.
The Directorate estimates that approximately 7 billion standard cubic meters of oil equivalent remain on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, equal to around 44 billion boe.
Approximately half consists of reserves and resources already identified in fields and discoveries. The other half has yet to be discovered and is therefore subject to considerably greater uncertainty.
The North Sea contains a mature resource base, extensive infrastructure and opportunities for smaller discoveries to be connected to existing platforms.
The Barents Sea holds the largest remaining potential, but much of it remains unexplored. Significant areas have not been opened to petroleum activity, while limited gas export capacity restricts the commercial value of discoveries.
Hammerfest LNG is currently the only gas export facility in the Barents Sea and is fully utilized by the Snøhvit field. Additional export capacity could bring production from existing fields and future discoveries forward by as much as 20 to 30 years.
Exploration Has Delivered Enormous Returns
Between 2000 and 2025, approximately 730 exploration wells were drilled on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, of which 370 resulted in discoveries.
The Directorate estimates that this exploration created close to $430 billion in net present value. For every dollar invested, the industry generated around four dollars in value. Exploration was profitable across all regions of the shelf.
The problem is where companies are drilling. Activity is increasingly concentrated close to established fields and infrastructure. These wells frequently generate profitable discoveries, but the discoveries are generally small and provide limited resource growth.
Larger discoveries are more likely in underexplored areas, but those prospects carry greater geological risk, require more capital and may depend on infrastructure that does not yet exist.
Norway therefore faces a difficult balance. Near-field exploration offers faster and more predictable returns, while frontier exploration offers the greater resource potential needed to sustain production beyond the 2030s.
Existing Fields Still Hold Significant Potential
Companies submitted approximately 145 potential improved-recovery projects in 2025, representing an estimated 280 million standard cubic meters of oil equivalent, or around 1.76 billion boe.
The measures include additional production wells, low-pressure production, late-life production, injection and advanced recovery methods.
New production wells are particularly important. More than 60% of Norway’s oil production in 2025 came from wells drilled after 2020, illustrating how continued drilling is required even at fields that have produced for decades.
Norway also has more than 90 undeveloped discoveries containing over 500 million standard cubic meters of contingent resources—equivalent to more than 3.1 billion boe.
Most are small and depend on access to existing infrastructure. This creates a narrowing window of opportunity: if host platforms, pipelines or processing facilities shut down first, nearby discoveries may lose their only commercially viable route to production.
One closure can therefore trigger a domino effect across an entire producing area.
Fewer Companies, Fewer Geological Ideas
The number of companies operating on the Norwegian Continental Shelf has more than halved since 2013.
Large international companies have withdrawn, while Equinor, Aker BP and Vår Energi increasingly dominate new developments.
This concentration can improve coordination and execution, particularly when smaller discoveries need to be connected to existing infrastructure. But the Directorate warns that fewer companies may also reduce geological diversity and competition for attractive exploration acreage.
Large discoveries often depend on companies interpreting the same geological data differently and being willing to pursue risks others reject.
Norway’s production decline is inevitable over the long term. The question is not whether output falls, but how quickly.
The difference between a controlled decline and a near-collapse will be determined by decisions made now: where companies explore, how quickly discoveries are developed, whether aging infrastructure remains available and whether new technology can unlock resources that are currently uneconomic.
Norway still has the resources to remain a significant petroleum producer for decades. What it no longer has is unlimited time to convert them into production.
By Jan-Thore Bergsagel for Oilprice.com
