The company said gas had been discovered in a prospecting zone called Asterix, 1,360 meters deep 345 kilometers (217 miles) off the coast in the Norwegian Sea.
"This represents one of the bigger discoveries off Norway in recent years and we are very pleased with the result," said Trove Stuhr Sjoeblom, Statoil's head of Norwegian exploration.
StatoilHydro has a 70-percent stake in the zone, with the Norwegian state-owned group Petoro holdong 20 percent and British-Dutch giant Shell 10 percent.
With estiamted recoverable reserves of 16 billion cubic meters, the new field is equivalent to about a month and half's worth of Norwway's total gas output, which came to 9.7 billion cubic metres in February.
Norway is the world's third-biggest gas exporter and the fifth-biggest oil exporter.
Source: AFP
Author: Ksenia Kochneva
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StatoilHydro Finds Gas Off Norway Coast
StatoilHyrdro said on Monday that it had found a deepwater gas field off the Norwegian cost that could hold 16 billion cubic metres of gas
