Losing Lofoten would imperil Norway’s Arctic push, oil boss warns

OSLO (Bloomberg) -- Backing down on drilling off Norway’s Lofoten islands could also threaten the search for 16 Bbbl of oil and gas that lies beneath the Barents Sea, the country’s energy minister said.

The warning comes amid increasing signs that Labor, the nation’s biggest party and a long-friend to the oil industry, is starting to give in to a push to shield the sensitive islands from exploration. Oil companies such as Equinor ASA have said access to the area, thought to hold about 1.3 Bbbl of oil and gas, is vital to prolonging Norway’s oil age.

“If the environmentalists win this one, the focus will quickly move to the Barents Sea,” Petroleum and Energy Minister Terje Soviknes, who represents the Progress Party in the Conservative-led government, said in an interview Friday.

Drilling off Lofoten has been one of the most deadlocked issues for years as political bargaining maintained a ban on exploration. Should Labor flip on the issue, there will be a solid majority in parliament for closing off Lofoten permanently.

Compromising with smaller parties, successive governments have kept the area off limits while expanding exploration in the Barents Sea. Success in the under-explored Barents is seen as key to limiting a forecast drop in production from the middle of the next decade.

Yet the recent search for resources there has been disappointing.

That adds to the importance of keeping the door open to Lofoten, Soviknes said. Norway’s supplier industry depends on new exploration and developments to keep thriving, he said.

The growing doubts about which way Labor will go is now hurting Norway’s attractiveness as an oil province, Soviknes said.

“They’re slipping in the Lofoten issue, and it’s being perceived as if they’re sliding in their entire oil policy,” he said. “That rocks what’s perhaps been the most important competitive advantage for the Norwegian oil industry: that we’ve had stable framework conditions regardless of political changes.”

The industry just weathered a deep crisis in 2014 to 2017 because of a crash in oil prices and the Lofoten issue could be next big challenge, Soviknes said.

Norwegian media have reported that a majority of local Labor groups in the Lofoten area now oppose an impact study, which is the first step needed to start exploration. The issue could come up at Labor’s congress next year, where the matter could come to a head.

But Labor’s top echelon, which has close ties to the powerful oil worker unions, rejected the minister’s criticism.

The party remains firmly in favor of exploring the Barents Sea, said Espen Barth Eide, the party’s spokesman on energy policy. Talk about Lofoten has little impact as long as the biggest parties -- Labor and Progress included -- have to keep smaller parties happy by keeping the islands off limits, he said.

“We’ve in no way turned on the need to explore for more oil,” Barth Eide said.

Nevertheless, he did acknowledge that at some point Norway needs to be less reliant and cut its exposure to oil. “There’s a renewable revolution going on in the world,” he said.