Pollution Authority will not expand APA to the Barents Sea
The Norwegian Pollution Control Agency (NPCA) discourages the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy to expand the areas in the APA-licensing round to the Barents Sea, arguing that several of the areas are close to the coast and particularly vulnerable.
The Ministry of Petroleum and Energy (MPE) has proposed an expansion of current drilling areas in the APA - Awards in Predefined Areas. The Norwegian Pollution Control Agency (NPCA) discourages MPE to do this:
- We generally believe that all the proposed drilling areas in the Barents Sea should be announced through regular licensing rounds. In those cases the treatment of each case will be more thorough, department director for NPCA, Signe Nåmdal, says in a press release.
APA is an announcement of licenses in predefined and mainly mature areas.
NPCA argues that there is little knowledge about the natural resources in the some of the discussed areas and that good knowledge about the natural resources and the vulnerability has to be just as important as good knowledge about the geology before areas are announced.
One of the criteria in the APA is the closeness in proximity to already existing infrastructure. These are not met in several of the proposed areas for this year’s round, Nåmdal says.
Norway’s oil production declines quicker than expected and the oil industry will have to look more in the Arctic, if production is to stabilize, the Norwegian Petroluem Directorate concluded in a resource report from September 2009.
