Norway Oil Minister Confident Snorre Extension Project Will Go Ahead

Norway is confident the Snorre oilfield's production life will be extended as planned, the country's oil and energy minister said on Tuesday, despite doubts expressed by some of the partners about the project's viability.

Statoil and partners planned to install a new platform at the North Sea field, which produced 88,000 barrels of oil per day last year and feeds into the Statfjord crude stream, to enable to extract an extra 240 million barrels of oil.

"I am confident that the operator and license holders can make this happen," said Tord Lien, Norway's oil and energy minister.

The choice of platform was supposed to be decided in the first quarter of next year, followed by an investment decision at a later time but in March Statoil said the project had to be looked at again due to cost inflation.

Partner Petoro, the firm that controls the Norwegian state's stakes in oilfields, said the partners had to work hard to make the project economically robust.

"Snorre 2040 is one of the projects we have great expectations for and which will lead to a lot of activity in the offshore supply industry and significantly increased income for the government," said Lien. "It's definitely one of the projects we follow closely."

The other partners in the Snorre field include ExxonMobil , Idemitsu, Total, Core Energy and RWE Dea.

(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis, writing by Gwladys Fouche, editing by Terje Solsvik)