Installation of the Aasta Hansteen facility opens a new province and a new chapter for gas deliveries from Norway.

China’s role in the energy picture is changing and that affects everybody, says Tim Gould, who keeps a particularly close eye on such developments as head of the World Energy Outlook team at the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The latest resource report from the NPD shows that oil and gas production is set to increase in the future. But new and larger discoveries must be made to maintain output after the mid-2020s.

Director Merete Vadla Madland at the National IOR Centre of Norway raised eyebrows among professionals when she declared on its opening in 2014: “70 per cent of the oil in Norwegian fields will be recovered”. The current recovery factor is just under 50 per cent, but Madland is sticking with her bold target.

The Aasta Hansteen platform has been towed out to the Norwegian Sea, and production is due to start flowing within months from this field to mid- Norway’s big new gas hub.

Turning Aasta Hansteen into a gas hub in the Norwegian Sea, which other discoveries can be tied into, is Torolf Christensen’s big dream. The first candidate is Snefrid North.

Natural gas has long been marketed as the energy bearer which can replace coal and help cut carbon emissions. But this vision has gone unfulfilled in continental Europe, Norway’s main gas market.

If anyone should be able to confirm the truth of the Biblical verse to “seek and ye shall find”, it is surely Eriksen. She smiles at the question. Those who search for oil and gas must be prepared for both success and failure. But not seeking will definitely exclude the possibility of finding.

It has taken time to gather strength, but the digitalisation wave is now washing over the oil industry with full force. The opportunities offered by artificial intelligence (AI) are huge.

Alexey Deryabin, NPD geologist: The photograph above shows a naturally polished rock containing the crosssection of a fossil coral colony. These creatures grew on reefs in the Late Carboniferous about 300 million years ago.

A new technology centre in Aberdeen is intended to change the UK oil and gas industry. But its first job will be to solve today’s problems.

The British created the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) in 2015 as their version of the NPD – 43 years after the latter was established. Chief executive Andy Samuel explains the time gap.