Norway's oil and gas firms have sharply raised their investment forecasts for 2023 after proposing more than a dozen new projects at the end of last year, a national statistics office (SSB) survey showed on Thursday.
The country's biggest business sector now expects to invest 187.8 billion Norwegian crowns in 2023, up from a forecast of 149.7 billion made in November, the SSB said. Next year's investments are seen at 178.6 billion crowns, an initial 2024 estimate showed.
Oil companies rushed to put forward new projects by the end of 2022, when Norway's temporary tax incentives, which were approved by parliament in 2020 to support offshore investments, expired.
Those plans include Aker BP's project to develop the Yggdrasil project, formerly called NOAKA, worth over $10 billion in investments. Spending on new offshore fields is only included in the survey when companies submit plans for development and operation (PDO) to the authorities.
The projects must still be formally approved by the government and, in many cases also parliament, but this is not expected to pose a threat to the plans.
(Reuters - Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis; editing by Terje Solsvik)
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