On Wednesday, an operator in Norway’s biggest oilfield Johan Sverdrup, Equinor, said that the oilfield is at a risk to be closed in the country’s energy workers’ strike unless it ended before October 14.
Other than Sverdrup, four smaller oil and gas fields would likely also shut in the strike’s expansion starting October 10.
About 43 members of Norway’s Lederne labor union had gone on a strike at the Sverdrup field last week, but Equinor was capable to sustain output with the staff remaining. Five companies own projects in the field, which are Equinor, Aker BP, Lundin Energy, Total SA, and Norway’s state oil company Petoro.
At the moment, only six field closed starting Monday on the original schedule of the workers’ strike, which slashed Norway’s output capacity by roughly 330,000 boepd, said the Norwegian Oil and Gas Association (NOG).
A Reuters calculation predicted that from those output slashed, almost 60% of the total were natural gas while the rest are crude oil and natural gas liquids.
Analyst Teodor Sveen-Nilsen of Sparebank 1 predicted that in a 10-day strike, earnings per share of the four owners would go down by 4% to 6% for the fourth quarter of 2020.
According to Refinitiv, following the news of the potential close of Sverdrup, the price of North Sea oil climbed by 15 cents to more than USD42.1/barrel by 20.00 GMT.
At this stage, there is no clarity on whether the government would intervene in the latest strike actions as ministers refrain from commenting on any decisions before executed.
