London (Platts)--13Nov2012/813 am EST/1313 GMT

Norway, the world's eighth largest crude exporter, warned on Tuesday that its 2012 target of producing 1.6 million b/d of oil may not be met, after output figures for October came in below expectations.

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, which produced the preliminary October totals, said oil output came in at an average 1.472 million b/d.

That was down 11.4% from 1.661 million b/d a year earlier and lower than the monthly target set of 1.7 million b/d.

The latest numbers compared with September when only 1.245 million b/d of oil and 7 billion cubic meters of gas were produced.

October gas output was up 22% year-on-year to 10 Bcm from 8.2 Bcm, but that was still lower than the NPD forecast of 10.36 Bcm.

The NPD said September and October output was hit when several new fields were delayed in coming on stream which added to the effect of other fields undergoing planned maintenance.

In October, 332,000 b/d of natural gas liquids and condensate were produced, down 12.2% year-on-year from 378,000 b/d.

The NPD on Tuesday repeated its doubts that its 2012 forecast for oil production might not be met.

In January, the NPD predicted oil output in 2012 would total 93.8 million cu m (1.6 million b/d), down from 97.3 million cu m (1.7 million b/d) in 2011 and 104.4 million cu m (1.8 million b/d) in 2010.

It said that downward trend was expected to continue until 2016 when output is seen at 90.2 million cu m.

On Tuesday the NPD said that in October both the Valhall and Hod fields had been closed for the entire month due to preparation ahead of the production start of a new platform.

As well the Ula, Tambar and Oselvar fields had also been closed for the entire month due to hydrocarbon leakage on Ula.

In addition, the Yme and Skarv fields should have contributed to production in October according to the NPD's own forecast, but these fields would not now contribute to achieving the NPD's forecast for 2012, although production for Skarv is scheduled for December.

The NPD said total hydrocarbon production for the first 10 months of 2012 is about 187.1 million cu m of oil equivalent, down from 179.6 million cu m a year earlier.

The oil production is also about 3% below the cumulative forecast for this year, said NPD Director Forecasting Jan Bygdevoll.

"Since the forecast for the remaining year is relatively high, it might be a challenge to meet the oil production target for 2012," Bygdevoll added.

NPD analyst Rune Hult told Platts by telephone that of the field downtimes had really surprised the directorate.

"The Ula field, for instance, which has had problems since September was really out of the blue," he said.

Norway's oil production has been falling consistently over the past decade and more -- production peaked in 2001 at 3.42 million b/d ? as declining output from its mature oil fields have failed until only recently to be replenished by new discoveries.

Huge new recent discoveries offshore Norway will take some years to come online.

--Patrick McLoughlin, newsdesk@platts.com
--Edited by Jonathan Dart, jonathan_dart@platts.com

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