Norway’s oil and gas production has been reduced by 2.4 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) so far this year as a result of an ongoing pay strike by oil service workers, industry group Offshore Norway said on Thursday.
Norway produced about 1.5 billion boe, or more than 4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) from offshore fields, in 2025. The strike, which began on June 15 after wage talks broke down, has caused production losses worth an estimated 1.6 billion Norwegian crowns ($163.6 million) when both realised and projected impacts are taken into account, Offshore Norway said.
Daily production losses continue to grow and are expected to reach around 120,000 boepd by mid-July, it added. After union SAFE escalated the strike on June 18, employers responded in late June by locking out about 1,000 additional workers to try to force an end to the dispute, warning that production disruptions could deepen.
Five mobile drilling rigs, five fixed offshore installations and one well intervention vessel have fully stopped operations so far, while four inspection, maintenance and repair (IMR) vessels have also been affected, Offshore Norway said. Safe union leader Raymond Midtgaard said the employers’ lockout, rather than the strike itself, was responsible for the production losses. “Safe has only taken a few hundred workers out on strike out of the total workforce,” he said in a text message to Reuters.
Norway’s labour ministry, which has the authority to intervene if a strike threatens vital national interests, has so far refrained from stepping in. The ministry was not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis, writing by Louise Rasmussen, editing by Essi Lehto and Philippa Fletcher)