Oslo (AFP) - Norway, Europe's largest natural gas supplier, will not grant new permits to explore for oil in unexplored or fully explored areas until 2025 under a political settlement announced on Tuesday.

In the course of negotiations aimed at approving the 2023 draft budget, the center-left minority government accepted a request in this regard from the Socialist Left, a small party seen as a support force that makes the climate emergency one of its battles.

The settlement stipulates that a “normal” concession cycle will not be organized until the end of the current legislative body, that is, in the year 2025.

Since 1965, this mechanism allows oil companies to apply for exploration in unexplored or partially explored areas of the Norwegian continental shelf.

The current action mainly concerns the waters of the Barents Sea in the Arctic, which potentially contains the largest reserves of fuel yet to be discovered in the country, after extensive drilling in the North Sea.

"This was at the heart of the Socialist Left Party (the battle), they won," Prime Minister Jonas Gar Store told a press conference.

However, the agreement does not exclude the granting of exploration licenses in the so-called mature areas.

While the chances of discovering large fields there appear to be less, these areas, which are being exploited on a large scale, remain attractive to the oil industry because developing new potential resources is easier and less expensive than existing facilities.

No regular concessions cycle took place this year either, due to another compromise reached last year between the government and the Socialist Left in previous budget negotiations.