Arctic drilling may become unprofitable for Norway if oil prices continue to fall, says a new report looking into the best and worst scenarios for this new frontier in the context of the new normal for international prices. The report comes on the heels of a tender that saw a record-high number of Arctic exploration licenses—102—the vast majority of them in the Barents Sea. The report’s authors, Mads Greaker and Knut Einar Rosendahl, revise significantly downward previous government estimates for the profitability of Arctic exploration, which were made back in 2012 and 2013 when the price of a barrel of crude was much higher than the US$49 for Brent today. At today’s prices, the study’s authors argue, Norway’s Arctic exploration could actually lead to a loss of US$240 million (2 billion crowns), under the worst-case scenario. Under the best-case scenario, profits would be US$4.92 billion (41 billion crowns). This […]