The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate said Monday it, the Danish Energy Agency and 10 oil companies would move to co-operate in a fresh push to boost oil and gas recovery from the chalk fields on the Norwegian and Danish shelves.
"There is still a lot to recover from the chalk fields both on the Norwegian and Danish shelves. The recovery from these fields must be viewed in a long-term perspective," NPD Chief Engineer Leif Hinderaker said.
The Danish Energy Agency has told Platts that currently the industry has an average recovery factor in the Danish fields of only 25%, because most of the Danish oil and gas is trapped in tight chalk formations.
A DEA official has said that Danish oil and gas output had been in decline since 2004, and if there was insufficient investment in new ways of extracting the oil, or new discoveries made, further declines were seen.
The DEA in its latest estimates expects 2011 oil production to be 217,000 b/d in 2011, down from 244,700 b/d last year. It predicts output of 199,000 b/d in 2012, falling to 160,000 b/d in 2015.
The NPD said Monday that it and the DEA have conducted six phases of a Joint Chalk Research program since 1982.
The oil companies participating in phase 7 are BP, ConocoPhillips, the Danish North Sea Fund, Danish producer DONG Energy, Eni, Hess, Maersk, Statoil, Shell and Total.
The NPD said research would be conducted in to how to achieve maximum efficiency in the use of water injection in chalk fields, as well as modeling of what happens in a reservoir when CO2 is injected for improved recovery.
The research would, among other things, be directed into production from marginal chalk reservoirs.
Last week Denmark's Maersk Oil, the oil and gas unit of the Danish group, confirmed it is go ahead with a pilot project to inject CO2 into oil fields in the Danish part of the North Sea, in an experiment to try to reverse the continued falls in production.
Earlier the same day, Danish business newspaper Borsen quoted Maersk Oil CEO Jackob Thomasen as saying that the future of AP Moller-Maersk's oil production in the Danish North Sea depended largely on whether a number of advanced and high-risk projects paid off in the coming years.
A DEA official told Platts that the pilot project was likely to be held at the Dan field in the Danish part of the North Sea, although no final decision had yet been made as to the location.
