"The horizon is grim."

That's how Rystad Energy Partner & Head of Energy Service Research Audun Martinsen describes the oil sector's future in connection with company cutbacks, he tells Norwegian media E24.

The Covid-19 pandemic has ripped the carpet from under commodity prices and hamstrung the industry, leaving less willingness to invest.

This will leave a mark on the future, and Rystad projects that the domestic sector's labor force will diminish by around 15 percent in 2022, equating to roughly 22,500 employees.

"Based on expected purchases, the number of planned installations and fields in operation, we foresee that companies will downscale," Martinsen tells the media.

According to the analyst, the virus crisis will continue to send aftershocks for a long time, and any upturn thus lies far into the future.

However, offshore wind will offset some of the oil-sector unemployment by absorbing redundant staff, but, Martinsen says, this will not really get moving before 2022-'23, when crude prices are also forecast to be back at a more viable level.

This is not the first time that Norway and the oil industry have been impacted by a crisis. A comparable thing took place between 2014 and 2016, when around 50,000 oil-related jobs evaporated.

English Edit: Daniel Frank Christensen

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