Arrivals of vessels at Norwegian and foreign ports (discontinued), 2012

Almost half (25 500) of these port calls were in Norway. Arrived gross tonnage in Norway was 188 million tonnes. Ships with a Norwegian flag are either registered in Norsk Ordinært Skipsregister (NOR) or Norsk Internasjonalt skipsregister (Norway's International Ship register - NIS). At the end of 2012, 1 026 ships with a Norwegian flag, excluding fishing vessels, had a gross tonnage over 1 000.

Fewer ships under foreign flag

While the activity level for ships with a Norwegian flag was basically flat from 2011 to 2012, ships registered abroad saw a drop in activity. The number of active ships, i.e. ships with a minimum of one port call, fell by more than 9 per cent last year. This is reflected in the activity, which shows an almost 3 per cent drop in the number of port calls and a drop in arrived gross tonnage of more than 6 per cent.

Norwegian enterprises controlled, directly or indirectly, 724 ships registered abroad that were active in 2012. The gross tonnage of these ships was just under16 million tonnes. They made 44 000 port calls and had 674 million arrived gross tonnes.

There is a substantial fall in the number of active tankers. Active Norwegian-controlled tankers registered abroad fell from 260 vessels and 11 million gross tonnes in 2011 to 206 ships and 8 million gross tonnes in 2012.

Foreign ports see more Norwegian flags

Foreign ports saw just as many ships under a Norwegian flag as Norwegian-controlled ships under a foreign flag in 2012. Norwegian-registered ships produced a total of 605 million arrived gross tonnes in foreign ports, while the equivalent figure for Norwegian-controlled ships under a foreign flag was 603 million tonnes. Not since 2007 have Norwegian registered ships made up most of the tonnes of the Norwegian-controlled fleet.