West Hercules, image courtesy North Atlantic Drilling
For the second day in a row, a Statoil-contracted drilling rig has found oil off Norway, this time however, the discovery was located 230 kilometers northwest of Hammerfest in the Barents Sea at the Drivis prospect.
Statoil notes the North Atlantic Drilling-owned West Hercules semisubmersible drilling rig encountered at 68-meter gas column in the Stø formation and an 86-metre gross oil column in the Stø and Nordmela formations with recoverable hydrocarbons estimated between seven and ten million standard cubic meters.
”We are certainly glad to have an oil discovery in Drivis. However, the exploration programme as a whole has not delivered on volume expectations. Out of the five wells drilled only two have resulted in oil discoveries,” commented Irene Rummelhoff, Statoil’s SVP for Exploration on the Norwegian continental shelf.
In May of last year, Statoil launched a five-well exploration campaign around the Johan Castberg field to determinate additional oil potential in the area.
The discovery will be considered for tie-in to 7220/8-1 Johan Castberg, however this particular well will be permanently plugged and abandoned.
The well was drilled to a vertical depth of 2029 meters in a water depth of 345 meters.
The West Hercules is contracted to Statoil until January 2017 at a day rate of $497,000.
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