OSLO, Sept 7 (Reuters) - A total of 38 oil companies havesubmitted bids for exploration acreage offshore Norway in aso-called predefined areas (APA) licensing round, the country'senergy ministry said on Friday.
Bidders include oil majors Shell, ConocoPhillipsand Total, as well as Norway's Equinorand Aker BP, Sweden's Lundin andItaly's Eni.
The total number of bidders was almost as high as the record39 in the previous APA round last year.
When announcing the round in May, the government expandedthe pre-defined areas near existing discoveries by a total of103 blocks in the Norwegian and the Barents Seas.
Norway's right-wing government wants oil companies toexplore more on the Norwegian continental shelf, especially inthe Arctic Barents Sea, which is estimated to hold more thanhalf of undiscovered resources on the shelf.
"The oil companies showing such interest in exploration onthe Norwegian continental shelf is important for future valuecreation, jobs and government revenues from Norway's largest andmost important industry," Norway's Oil and Energy MinisterKjell-Boerge Freiberg said.
About 170,000 people are directly or indirectly involved inthe petroleum industry in the Nordic country of 5.3 million, theministry said.
Environmentalists and some opposition politicians, however,have called on the Norwegian government to stop exploring fornew oil and gas resources to reduce global carbon emissions.
The ministry plans to award licences in early 2019, itadded.(Reporting by Ole Petter Skonnord, editing by Nerijus Adomaitisand Mark Potter)
