Norway eyes enhanced oil & gas recovery projects to boost production

April 15, 2026, by Melisa Cavcic

Given its aim to increase oil and gas output on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS), the Norwegian Offshore Directorate (NOD), reporting to Norway’s Ministry of Energy, has spotlighted the use of advanced methods as a solution to curb production decline.

Illustration; Credit: Morten Berentsen/NOD

The Norwegian Offshore Directorate claims there is no time to waste if Norway wants to extract more oil and gas from the Norwegian Continental Shelf using advanced methods, as the benefits for the broader society could be enormous. A study, conducted by experts from Imperial College a few years ago on assignment from the NOD, emphasizes that there are huge opportunities for increasing production of oil and gas using enhanced oil and gas recovery (EOGR).

Ove Bjørn Wilson, Senior Reservoir Engineer at Norwegian Offshore Directorate, commented: “One of the Directorate’s most important priorities is to support measures that can curb the expected decline in production from the NCS. There is a significant gap between the identified EOGR opportunities and the few pilot projects that have actually been pursued.”

The Ministry of Energy assigned the Directorate the task of “contributing to realise profitable development using advanced EOGR methods.” As a result, an internal task force has begun the work of looking at projects that have not yet been completed or implemented, building on the study from Imperial College, which estimated the theoretical potential for enhanced recovery using advanced methods at 350-700 million standard cubic meters of oil equivalent.

“There is still uncertainty as to how much of this could actually yield profitable increased recovery. We could be talking about quantities that match the entire production from the Johan Sverdrup field. This could have a significant impact on activity on the NCS, and yield vast revenues for both the industry and society in general,” added Wilson.

According to the Norwegian Offshore Directorate, several promising EOGR methods have been evaluated in the past, aimed at specific fields, which were abandoned due to challenging technical feasibility, the companies’ profitability requirements, costs associated with environmental considerations, or limited access to suitable injection sources.

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As EOGR has been tested and implemented offshore in other parts of the world, Wilson underlined: “This shows that EOGR is technically feasible and profitable under conditions comparable to the NCS. In our efforts now, we’ll be thinking outside the box, looking at alternatives we haven’t previously investigated.”

With this in mind, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate is assessing which fields may have suitable geological and technical conditions in the subsurface to allow for implementation of an EOGR pilot, while analyzing at what point in a field’s lifetime such a measure could still yield profitable production, and when it may be too late.

“The objective is to identify fields that are well-suited for profitable production with the aid of advanced methods, which the operators should examine in more detail. This is urgent work, as the development of the NCS is already mature,” emphasized Wilson.

“We need to find the right method for each individual field, taking into account the field’s existing recovery strategy. In fact, everything that’s been done on a field up to the present has an impact on whether or not it may be profitable to implement enhanced recovery using advanced methods.”