Production at Norwegian energy group Statoil's Snorre and Vigdis oilfields in the North Sea returned to near normal on Sunday, two days after a strike was ended by the government, the company said.
Most of production on the 240,000 barrels per day (bpd) Snorre field and the connected 75,000 bpd Vigdis field was restored to normal on Sunday after being restarted on Saturday, a Statoil spokesman said.
"The Snorre A platform, including production from Vigdis, is running as normal," Statoil spokesman Morten Henriksrud said.
"The situation on the Snorre B platform is not entirely clear because some repairs are being done there. So it may be a little delayed, but Snorre B has only 25 percent of the total production," Henriksrud said.
All of the normal staff had returned to the platforms, though some project workers were coming later, he said.
The remarks were in line with Statoil's earlier statement that production would return to normal during the weekend.
The week-long strike that ended on Friday had shut 375,000 bpd of total crude output of three million bpd in the world's third-biggest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia and Russia.
The strike by the OFS oil workers' union had shut Snorre and Vigdis on June 19 and ConocoPhillips' Ekofisk Bravo platform with 60,000 bpd output on June 22.
Production at Ekofisk Bravo had returned to normal by Saturday morning, the US company said earlier.
On Friday, Norway's centre-right government invoked controversial emergency laws to order workers back to platforms and avert a complete shutdown of oil and gas deliveries after employers threatened to lock out strikers.
The union slammed the government's intervention, saying it was trampling its right to strike, but said its members would obey the back-to-work order and refrain from wildcat strikes.

Copyright Reuters, 2004

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