* Energy minister expects demand for oil to outpace supplies
* To boost exploration off Norway, open more of Barents Sea
* Big Skrugard oil find may attract majors back to Norway
By Wojciech Moskwa
OSLO, April 12 (Reuters) - Norway's new Petroleum and Energy Minister Ola Borten Moe said he expects the oil price to move much higher as economic growth-driven demand outpaces supplies.
Non-OPEC Norway, the world's No. 5 oil exporter and No. 2 in natural gas, will seek to steady markets by increasing exploration activity offshore Norway and quickly opening up a new Barents Sea region for oil and gas activity, Moe said.
Crude prices have surged by a third in 2011 to $125 per barrel amid upheaval in the Arab world, potentially threatening a fragile global economic recovery.
"It is my belief that there will be higher demand for energy than supply due to increased economic activity and more people," Moe told Reuters Insider in an interview.
"And that is good news (for exporter Norway) and may also be good news for the oil price... In the future we will see much higher (oil price) levels than we are used to." Moe said advances in technology have allowed Norway, whose oil era started in 1970, to maintain production longer than envisaged and in some cases increase it.
"In our best fields we only have the technology to explore about 50 percent of the (reservoir). So there are large amounts of oil and gas that are theoretically possible to explore," said Moe, 34, who took over as energy minister in March.
Norway's oil output has nonetheless dropped by some 40 percent since 2000 as North Sea fields mature and most new finds turn out to be small, leaving oil majors to look elsewhere for growth and operators increasingly focused on extracting gas.
MAJOR ATTRACTION
Moe said that Statoil's Skrugard discovery in the Barents Sea last month, Norway's biggest find in a decade that may hold up to 500 million barrels of oil equivalent, could once again put Norway on the majors' radar screens.
"I hope that it will make the area more attractive for new companies," Moe said. "We need several companies that can contribute to development and... new technologies in Norway. In that picture, it is important to have the majors' presence in Norway."
The Skrugard find also bodes well for foreign interest once Norway allows oil activity in a separate Barents Sea region that was delineated in a treaty with Russia last year and, according to communist-era studies, may be rich with oil and gas.
"I am very optimistic -- there might be even bigger fish in the ocean," Moe said of the untapped region.
Norway's turn to natural gas has come at a time when new technology has boosted supplies of unconvential gas worldwide and weakened gas prices in Norway's biggest market -- Europe.
Trying to twin Norway's role as a top fossil fuel provider with its image as a leader in the global fight to curb emissions, Moe said that if Europe replaced all its coal-burning power plants with gas-powered ones it would meet emissions-reduction goals.
"It is clean and it is cheap and from our perspective... gas has a future," Moe said.