U.S. energy major ConocoPhillips has been granted consent for exploration drilling in the North Sea off Norway by the country’s offshore petroleum safety regulator, enabling the oil and gas giant to carry out these activities using a Transocean-owned rig.
The Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) informed last Friday that it had given ConocoPhillips consent for exploration drilling in block 25/7 in the North Sea.
The drilling programme for the well 25/7-10 entails the drilling of an exploration well in production licence 782 S , which was awarded on 6 February 2015 and is valid until 6 February 2025. ConocoPhillips Skandinavia is the operator of the licence with an ownership interest of 40 per cent and other licensees are Aker BP (20 per cent), Equinor (20 per cent), and Wintershall Dea Norge (20 per cent).
The company is targeting a prospect named Lamba and drilling operations will be conducted in water depths of 125,5 meters.
The regulator confirms that these drilling operations will be carried out by the Transocean Norge semi-submersible rig – built by Sembcorp Marine at the Jurong Shipyard (JSPL) in Singapore – which is owned and operated by Transocean, The rig received an Acknowledgement of Compliance (AoC) from the PSA in July 2019.
The Transocean Norge rig was contracted in June 2021 for four wells with five one-well options and Transocean’s fleet status report from April confirms that the contract with ConocoPhillips started in March 2022 under a day rate of $280,000. The deal is scheduled to end in September 2022.
In late May 2021, the Norwegian regulator awarded another consent for a prospect named Bounty to ConocoPhillips to conduct drilling operations offshore Norway with the same rig.
In regards to ConocoPhillips’ most recent activities in Norway, it is worth reminding that the energy giant handed over another extension for maintenance and modification work on its North Sea fields to Aker Solutions at the start of this month.