Statoil ASA plans to double oil production from deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico in three years after slashing one in five workers at its U.S. business and installing new managers.
The Norwegian oil giant is bucking the trend among other major explorers who are scaling back or outright canceling deepwater Gulf of Mexico exploration to cope with the worst crude-market collapse in a generation. For Statoil, each barrel of oil pumped in the U.S. is five times more valuable than crude from its Norwegian heartland because of different taxation levels, said Torgrim Reitan, the former Statoil finance chief who took over the company’s U.S. business last year.
Statoil, which is pumping 40,000 to 50,000 barrels of oil daily from the Gulf, continues to cut costs and is aiming to lower the profit threshold for its U.S. wells to $50 a barrel by the end of 2018 from about $90 in 2014, Reitan, a former gas trader, said on the sidelines of the CERAWeek 2016 conference in Houston on Monday.
Brazil Energy Insight 
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