Equinor gearing up to drill two North Sea wells

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) has granted Equinor a drilling permit for the drilling of two wells located offshore Norway.

The wells 35/11-25 S and 35/11-25 A will be drilled from the Deepsea Atlantic drilling rig after completing maintenance work on Gullfaks for Equinor in production licence 050.

The drilling programme for wells 35/11-25 S and 35/11-25 A relates to the drilling of wildcat wells in production licence 090, which is located in the North Sea.

Equinor Energy is the operator of the licence with an ownership interest of 45 per cent.

Other licensees are Vår Energi (25 per cent), Neptune Energy Norge (15 per cent), and Idemitsu Petroleum Norge (15 per cent).

The area in this licence consists of part of block 35/11. The wells will be drilled about 10 kilometres west of the Fram field.

Production licence 090 was awarded on 9 March 1984 (the 8th Round). This is the 21st exploration well to be drilled in the licence.

Equinor has recently made the biggest discovery so far this year on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS) in a prospect near the Fram field in the North Sea.

The two wells were drilled about three kilometres southwest of the Fram field in the Blasto prospect, using the West Hercules drilling rig.

Equinor stated that the preliminary estimate of the size of the discovery is between 12 and 19 million standard cubic metres (Sm3) of recoverable oil equivalent, corresponding to 75-120 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent.