Norwegian crude oil production in January averaged 1.568 million b/d of oil, up 5.7% from 1.484 million b/d for January 2013, according to preliminary figures released Friday by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate.
The latest figure also bettered the figure of 1.543 million b/d for December 2013.
The improvement was despite technical problems which reduced output at the Draugen, Ekofisk, Gullfaks and Skuld fields offshore Norway, the NPD said in its statement.
It said oil production was about 2% above its forecast for the month, but gave no further details.
Norway produced 379,000 b/d of NGLs and condensate in January, down 3% from 392,000 b/d a year earlier, NPD said.
Last December Norway produced 373,000 b/d of NGL and condensate, down from 415,000 b/d for December 2012.
The NPD Director of Prognosis, Jan Bygdevoll, in December pointed to a late upward burst of production positively impacted by new fields coming on stream, including Skarv which started at the beginning of 2013 and continued to ramp up through the year.
In recent years Norway has seen its production steadily erode from peaks of over 3 million b/d a decade ago to barely one third of that, although major recent discoveries are set to contribute more production when they come in stream in the next few years, including the massive Johan Sverdrup oil and gas discovery which will start producing late 2019.
The NPD, releasing the annual update to its forecasts on Wednesday, said oil production would average 1.463 million b/d for 2014, in line with the 2013 level of 1.464 million b/d but down from its previous estimate for 2014 production made last year of 1.52 million b/d.
