Extraordinarily low oil production in August

Production in the oil and gas industry, manufacturing, mining and quarrying, and electricity supply declined by 1.4 percent during the last month. Thus, when the weekly-corrected statistics are compared, the all-items index is 2.8 percent lower than in August last year. This decline is related to the low oil production in August this year.

Oil and gas extraction dropped by 14.8 percent from July to August. This is partly related to an extraordinary production stoppage at the Ekofisk field and shutdowns for maintenance at many of the other fields. Otherwise, there has been an increase in power production of 16.3 percent from July to August. In August, power production was 15.5 percent higher than a year ago.

Slight decline in industrial production

The production in manufacturing and mining and quarrying declined by 0.5 percent from July to August. In manufacturing alone, there was a decline of 0.4 percent after taking normal seasonal variations into consideration. Here the trend during the last six months shows a decrease of 0.2 percent. Few industries distinguish themselves with clear growth in that period.

New Statistics
Index of production, August 1998.
The statistics are published monthly in the Weekly Bulletin of Statistics. For more information contact:
Oyvind.Naustdal@ssb.no, tel. +47 21 09 47 35, or Kjell.Berger@ssb.no, tel. +47 21 09 47 19. Tables can be found in the Statistical Annex on pages 18-23.

Tabeller finner du på statistikkens faste side.

Weekly Bulletin issue no. 41, 1998