Oil and gas company Wellesley Petroleum has completed the drilling of wildcat well 35/4-2 in the North Sea offshore Norway. The well is dry.
The well is located in production license 931 where Wellesley is the operator. The company received safety consent to drill the well using the Transocean Arctic semi-submersible rig in late November 2018 and a drilling permit for the well in December 2018.
The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) said on Friday that the well was drilled about 33 kilometers south of the 35/2-1 (Peon) gas discovery and 77 kilometers west of Florø, in the northern part of the North Sea.
The objective of the well was to prove gas in reservoir rocks from the Pliocene Age (intra Naust Formation sandstone).
The well 35/4-2 did not encounter sandstone, but did encounter a sequence dominated by claystone and siltstone in the Naust Formation. There were traces of gas in the top of the reservoir. The well is classified as dry. Data acquisition and sampling have been carried out.
This is the first exploration well in production license 931, which was awarded in APA 2017.
The well was drilled to a vertical depth of 770 meters below the sea surface and was terminated in the Naust Formation. Water depth at the site is 392 meters. The well has been permanently plugged and abandoned.
According to the NPD, the Transocean Arctic drilling rig will now proceed to production license 871 in the central part of the North Sea to drill wildcat well 25/1-13 , where Wellesley Petroleum is the operator.