Equinor’s North Sea well comes up dry

Exploration & Production

Oil and gas company Equinor has concluded the drilling of wildcat well 36/1-3 in the North Sea offshore Norway. The well was dry. 

The well was drilled in production license 885, containing the Presto prospect, about 15 kilometers east of the 35/3-2 (Agat) gas discovery and 55 kilometers northwest of Florø, in the northern part of the North Sea.

Equinor is the operator of the license with an ownership interest of 20 percent and its partners are Capricorn, Wellesley Petroleum, and Petoro with 30, 20, and 20 percent interest respectively.

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) said on Wednesday that the primary and secondary exploration targets for the well were to examine reservoir rocks from the Early Cretaceous Age (upper and lower part of the Agat formation).

The well 36/1-3 encountered the Agat formation with a thickness of about 180 meters, of which 55 meters of reservoir rocks with good to very good reservoir quality. The well was dry. Data acquisition and sampling have been carried out.

This is the first exploration well in production license 885, which was awarded in APA 2016.

The well was drilled to a vertical depth of 2873 meters below the sea surface, and was terminated in basement rock. Water depth at the site is 230 meters. The well has been permanently plugged and abandoned.

The well 36/1-3 was drilled by the Transocean Spitsbergen semi-submersible rig, which will now proceed to production license 870 in the central part of the North Sea to drill wildcat well 25/6-6 S, where Equinor is also the operator.

Equinor also recently drilled two wells in the Barents Sea –   the Gjøkåsen Shallow and Gjøkåsen Deep – both of which came up dry.


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