Norway's trade surplus in 2015 decreased by 36.4 percent to 220 billion kroner (26.4 billion U.S. dollars) due to lower exports and increased imports, the country' s statistics bureau said on Thursday.
Norway's exports were 836 billion kroner last year, down about 8 percent from 2014, while imports rose by 9.5 percent to 616 billion kroner, according to final figures for external trade in goods published by Statistics Norway.
The figures show that oil with a value in excess of 197 billion kroner was exported in 2015, down 30.3 percent compared to 2014.
The decline was due to lower oil prices as a barrel of crude oil averaged 414 kroner per barrel in 2015, which is a decrease of 197 kroner, or 32.2 percent compared to 2014.
A total of 476 million barrels of crude oil were exported in 2015, which is an increase of 2.9 percent from the year before. Britain, the Netherlands and Germany received most of the Norwegian oil.
These countries imported Norwegian crude oil valued at 148 billion kroner in 2015, representing about 75 percent of Norwegian oil exports.
Exports of natural gas amounted to more than 220 billion kroner, down 1.3 percent compared with 2014.
A total of 109.6 billion cubic meters of natural gas in gaseous state were exported, an increase of 7.1 percent from the previous year.
Norway's mainland exports, referring to goods other than crude oil, natural gas, natural gas condensates, ships and oil platforms, amounted to more than 404 billion kroner in 2015, up 4.4 percent from the previous year.
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