Great efforts were devoted by Amoco Norway around 1990 to restoring a positive spirit in company. After the difficult period with the initial problem wells on Valhall, the 1986 oil price slump and high staff turnover, the curves were climbing again.

A selection of incidents on Valhall from 1976 to 2014:

A blaze which began on the Valhall process and compression platform (PCP) in 2011 was extinguished in 97 minutes. Fortunately, nobody was hurt.

BP Norge initiated yet another set of changes around 2000 to reduce operating costs. Through the Offshore People Strategy (OPS) and GO for the Future (GO4F) processes, the company sought to safeguard its presence in Norway by tailoring costs, expertise and staffing.

All fields on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS) have several licensees. One acts as the operator, organising development and operation, while the others provide support and supervision.

Norway’s oil industry was in a depressed state during the early 1990s. Development on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS) had stagnated, and hopes of finding big new fields were gone. Moreover, the sector’s vulnerability to international economic cycles was exposed when oil prices slumped to a historic low in 1986.

A refinery outside Whiting, Indiana, founded in 1889as Standard Oil Company (Indiana) and part of John D Rockefeller’s Standard OilTrust, was the origin of what became Amoco Corporation.

American International (Amoco) created a Norwegian armin 1965. This was intended to comply with the country’s requirement that companies wanting to participate actively in future drilling off Norway had to have a local presence.

Flexibility and change had become a trend in the global oil industry by the mid-1980s. This article considers how a Norwegian-American enterprise acted in a world where continuous improvement was the mantra. It analyses policies and assessments by Amoco Norway’s management and the latter’s efforts to be part of this new paradigm, but does not deal with criticism of the new organisational approaches from unions or others.

Amoco and BP announced their nuptials on 11 August 1998, unveiling the world’s biggest industrial merger until then. But the news took the employees in both companies completely by surprise.

Amoco employees opted to establish a “house” or “enterprise” union when Valhall came on stream in 1983. But a later decision to join the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) gave rise to a protracted dispute with its former partners.