Output at Norway oil firms exceeds forecasts despite price slump

Oslo

FOR Norway, the collapse in crude prices has a silver lining: output has exceeded expectations every month for the past two years.

That's likely to continue as oil companies boost efficiency and pump at full pace as revenue dwindles, according to the head of Petoro AS, the state-owned oil company that owns more than a quarter of the petroleum output in Western Europe's biggest producer.

"Improvement efforts and the focus on profitability have led to very high regularity," chief executive officer Grethe Moen said in a phone…