Norway expands scope of 2025 licensing round with more Barents Sea blocks

Norway launched May 9 the country's 2025 offshore licensing round for pre-defined areas, with additional blocks offered in the Barents Sea and Norwegian Sea.

The Awards in Predefined Areas (APA) 2025 round has been expanded to include 76 more northerly blocks, comprising 68 additional blocks in the Barents Sea and eight in the Norwegian Sea, the country's energy ministry said in a statement.

Expanding activity in the north is seen as key to the further development of the Norwegian Continental Shelf.

"We will explore more, find more and extract more. Therefore, it is important to ensure stable access to exploration areas for the companies," energy minister Terje Aasland said.

"Never before has a larger area been announced in a licensing round. It is good for Norway and for Europe," Aasland said.

Norway is now the biggest single supplier of gas to Europe after Russian flows were sharply curtailed through 2022, with Norwegian deliveries meeting around a quarter of European demand.

Norwegian operators maximized production and European exports to help offset lost Russian volumes and to make the most of high prices, which hit record highs in the summer of 2022.

Producers continue to look to ensure high output levels given the ongoing strength in European gas prices. Platts, part of Energy, assessed the TTF month-ahead price on May 8 at Eur35.42/MWh.

Norway's APA 2025 round has an application deadline of Sept. 2, 2025, with license awards expected in January 2026.

Policy 'pillar'

The APA area covers blocks in the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea.

"The APA rounds are a pillar of the government's petroleum policy," Aasland said.

"Further exploration and more discoveries are crucial to limiting the decline in production on the NCS after 2030. The expansion this year gives the companies access to significant new area in the Barents Sea and in this way we are even better positioned to clarify the resource base in the north," he said.

Aasland called on companies to explore for opportunities with significant resource potential in addition to infrastructure-related exploration, which he said must also be continued.

Norwegian gas production reached an all-time high of 124 Bcm in 2024, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate said earlier this month, surpassing the previous record level from 2022.

In its annual outlook, the NOD -- formerly known as the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate -- said production was expected to remain at a stable level before gradually decreasing toward the end of the 2020s.

Gas production is set to drop to 110.8 Bcm in 2029, it said

Previous round

In January this year, Norway offered 53 new licenses to 20 companies in its 2024 APA round.

Among the 20 companies awarded licenses, Aker BP, Norway's state-controlled Equinor and Var Energi were the biggest winners.

Equinor is involved in 27 licenses and is the operator of seven, while Aker BP is in 19 of the licenses awarded and is the operator of 16. Var Energi is involved in 16 licenses and operator of five.

Other companies awarded licenses included Shell, ConocoPhillips, OMV, Orlen, Harbour Energy and TotalEnergies, as well as several smaller companies.

The 53 licenses offered are distributed between the North Sea at 33, the Norwegian Sea at 19 and the Barents Sea at one.