Strike to reduce Norway's oil, gas output by a quarter

An ongoing strike by Norwegian oil workers could cut almost a quarter of the country’s petroleum production by Oct. 14, which could further increase prices on the international oil market.

The collapse of wage talks between the Lederne union and the oil companies triggered a shutdown of six offshore oil and gas fields beginning Oct. 5 that cut capacity by 8 percent, or around 330,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd).

The union is demanding that the pay and working conditions of offshore workers be the same as those at onshore remote control rooms as well as a higher wage increase than that proposed by oil firms.

US oil major ConocoPhillips announced plans to shut down its Ekofisk 2/4 B platform, which has an output of 7,000 boepd, on Oct. 10.

Another six oil and gas fields could close or reduce operations by Oct. 14, including the Ekofisk platform.

The biggest outage would be at North Sea’s largest oilfield, Equinor’s Johan Sverdrup, which has an output of up to 470,000 boepd.

A total 941,000 boepd are expected to go offline.

Around 60 percent of the production cuts were natural gas, with crude oil and natural gas liquids comprising the rest.