Norway's Johan Sverdrup plan sparks licence dispute

Participants in the vast Johan Sverdrup oilfield have submitted a development plan - but are in dispute over ownership interests

Statoil and partners in the Johan Sverdrup field - one of Norway's largest discoveries - met their target of submitting a plan for development and operation (PDO) in February, but have asked the ministry of petroleum to settle an extraordinary dispute over the field's unitisation. At stake is the distribution of production revenues estimated to total $180 billion over 50 years, and the sharing of up to $29bn of development costs. The dispute sets Norway's Det Norske Oljeselskap - a small Trondheim-based company, with a production of 63,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day (boe/d) - against heavyweights Statoil and Lundin, the companies which drilled the two Johan Sverdrup discovery wells, in