Norway's oil and gas production in November beats expectations

Norwegian Offshore Directorate (NOD), a government agency, announced on Tuesday that Norway's combined oil and gas production in November exceeded an official forecast by 0.9%.

Norway is Europe's biggest supplier of natural gases and oil. However, output can vary from one month to the next depending on maintenance and other stops at close to 100 offshore fields.

The total oil, gas, liquids, and condensate output in November was 0.694 standard cubic metres, which is equivalent to 4,37 million barrels of oil equivalence. This represents an increase of 0.9% on the previous year.

The regulator reported on its website that natural gas production fell to 361.5 million cubic meters (mcm), down from 361.6 mcm, a year ago. This was 2.1% less than the forecasted figure of 354.1 mcm.

NOD's preliminaries showed that crude oil production rose to 1.88 million barrels a day (bpd) in the month of August, up from 1.73 million. This was above the forecasted 1.80 million bpd.

The data revealed that the NOD's estimate for total oil liquids production, which includes crude, condensates, and natural gas fluids, was 0.5% behind. Reporting by Nora Buli and editing by EssiLehto

(source: Reuters)