Norwegian continental shelf
The (or) Norwegian Continental Shelf ( Norwegian Continental Shelf ) is the part of the European margin, as the continental shelf along the Norwegian extends coast. Its size corresponds to about a third of the size of the entire European continental shelf; it extends over an area roughly four times the size of mainland Norway itself.
Geographical features
Part of the North Sea lies on the Norwegian continental shelf. This connects the Norwegian continental shelf almost seamlessly with the British one at a shallow depth of less than 200 meters. Only at one point, the Norwegian channel , does it reach a depth of up to 700 meters.
Economic and political importance
The shelf is searched for oil and natural gas . The mining of these raw materials is mainly carried out by the state-owned mineral oil company Equinor and makes Norway the third largest oil exporter in the world after Saudi Arabia and Russia with an average of three million barrels per day . Although the oil reserves on the Norwegian continental shelf only make up a relatively small part of the world's oil reserves (a few percent), they still make up around half of Europe's oil reserves. Most of the oil drilling activity in the area of the shelf takes place in the North Sea and in the southern part of the European North Sea . Towards the end of the 20th century, however, an oil boom began to take hold in Northern Norway after Statoil started the world's first offshore operation in the Arctic in the Snøhvit natural gas field (Norwegian “snow white”). Norway's largest natural gas liquefaction plant is being built on the island of Melkøya near Hammerfest , one of the most expensive projects in Northern Norway to date.
literature
- Roald Sætre (Ed.): The Norwegian Coastal Current - Oceanography and Climate. Tapir Academic Press, Trondheim 2007. ISBN 978-82-519-2184-8