Norway will step up preparations to claim its share of oil and gas resources if Russia finds petroleum on its side of the border in the Barents Sea, Reuters writes citing Director General of the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) Bente Nyland.

"Let's say they started to drill close to (the border) and there is a cross-border structure, then, of course, Norway would like to get the resources that belong to Norway," Bente Nyland told Reuters. "That's the same with the border toward UK and Denmark," she added.

Any discoveries on the Russian side could trigger a political debate in Oslo about the need to open those areas for exploration as well, Nyland said.

Reuters writes that opening up more exploration areas could be politically difficult given Norway's climate commitments and opposition from various environmental organizations and some political parties.

Russia and Norway signed an agreement on the delimitation of maritime areas and cooperation in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean in 2010. The agreement came into force in July 2011, ending the delimitation talks that began back in 1970. The 2010 agreement gives Russia and Norway the right to freely develop their parts of the Arctic shelf.