Equinor fails to find hydrocarbons in Norwegian Sea well

Norwegian oil and gas player Equinor has failed to find hydrocarbons in the stacked Ginny/Hermine exploration prospects in the Norwegian Sea and the well will now be plugged and abandoned.

Exploration well 6407/9-13 is located in licence PL1060 where Equinor is the operator with a 31 per cent working interest. Other licensees are OKEA (40 per cent), Chrysaor Norge (20 per cent), and Longboat Energy Norge (9 per cent).

The license was awarded in the APA 2019 licensing round and is located northwest of the Draugen field, which is operated by OKEA (44.56 per cent WI).

The drilling permit was secured in October 2021 and the well was spud at the beginning of January 2022, using the West Hercules rig.

The well 6407/9-13 was targeting both the Upper Jurassic Ginny and the Middle Jurassic Hermine prospects located between the Galtvort discovery and Hasselmus field development.

As informed by Longboat on Wednesday, the well was drilled to a vertical depth of 2,319 metres below sea level and encountered the target reservoirs water wet. The drilling operations were carried out within budget and with no HSE incidents.

Helge Hammer, Chief Executive of Longboat, commented: “Although this was the least impactful target in our portfolio, we are disappointed that the Ginny and Hermine prospects were not successful, particularly given their location between discoveries of similar age and structure.

“In the meantime, the company is looking forward to continuing the fully funded well programme with the Kveikje well expected to spud next month, the Cambozola well spudding in the spring and Copernicus in the summer.”

Another partner in the licence, OKEA, also confirmed on Wednesday that the well is dry and will be abandoned once data acquisition is completed.

According to OKEA, data acquired in the well will be used to evaluate the further potential in the licence, which includes the Galtvort discovery and support OKEA’s other exploration activities in the area.

Earlier this week, Equinor received a permit for another wildcat well, which will be drilled using the Deepsea Stavanger rig. The semi-sub unit has just started its contract with the Norwegian company under a contract awarded back in May 2021.