The new oil platform Johan Sverdrup is named after the first Norwegian Prime Minister and is the third largest in Norway. The current Prime Minister, Erna Solberg, says she will help reduce greenhouse gases because the entire plant is powered by renewable sources.
140 km from the Norwegian coast. The platform extracts almost all energy from the strength of sea water. It is a rare rarity for such a remote oil field - they are mostly powered by diesel generators, writes CNN. There are up to 2.7 billion barrels of oil in undersea repositories, and a well could produce up to 660,000 barrels of oil per day. Mining should take half a century, and Norway is estimated to bring over $ 100 billion.
Norwegian export article: issue
Norway has committed itself to a zero-emission society by 2030. Fortunately, for a Scandinavian country, this restriction does not apply to oil exports: emissions are the responsibility of the state in whose territory fossil fuels are used. As a result, Norway can be the second largest oil producer in Europe, after Russia, with an export capacity of two million barrels per day and a global leader in the fight against climate change.
Equinor, a Norwegian state-owned energy company, boasts high efficiency in oil production on the new platform. They use twenty-five times less greenhouse gases to extract one barrel of oil than normal average extraction. According to their claims, mining should be much cheaper than before.
Critics of the Norwegian oil industry argue that only five percent of all emissions in the world come from oil production and production. A bigger problem arises in the combustion of fossil fuels. Emissions generated directly in Norway climbed to the equivalent of 53 million tonnes of CO2 in 2017, but Norwegian oil consumed abroad produced the equivalent of 470 million tonnes of CO2.
However, when the Norwegian government talks about reducing emissions, it is only about domestic emissions, not export emissions.
Energy-efficient oil rigs
The whole of Norway's domestic consumption will be covered by renewable energy sources, in particular hydroelectric power. Norwegians can afford to sell most of their oil abroad. Oil and gas sales account for almost one fifth of its GDP.
Norwegians continue to count on fossil fuel extraction for decades. In 2018, the country granted a record 89 mining licenses, last year 26 different companies received 69 licenses.
Equinor pledged that by 2050 all oil rigs would be emission-free, aiming at total electrification of the mining process. The new Johan Sverdrup platform is to be in operation by 2070.
