North Sea wildcat well comes up dry

Norwegian oil and gas company Equinor has found no traces of hydrocarbons in its latest exploration well located offshore Norway.

The wildcat well 34/4-18 S is located in production licence 057 (part of the Snorre Unit) where Equinor is the operator with Petoro, Wintershall Dea, Inpex Idemitsu Norge, and Vår Energi as partners.

The drilling permit for this well and for the recently spudded Kveikje well was secured in February 2022.

According to a Friday report by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD), the well was drilled about 7 kilometres north-west of the Snorre field in the North Sea and 160 kilometres west of Florø. The objective was to prove petroleum in reservoir rocks from the Late Triassic-Early Jurassic (the Statfjord Group).

The well encountered about 24 metres of sandstone rocks in the Eiriksson Formation (the Statfjord Group) from the Early Jurassic with good reservoir quality.

Furthermore, the well encountered about 25 metres of sandstone rocks in the Raude Formation (the Statfjord Group) from the Late Triassic, with moderate to good reservoir quality.

Data acquisition was carried out. The well is dry, with no traces of hydrocarbons.

This is the 14th exploration well in production licence 057, which was awarded in 1979 in the 4th licensing round.

The well 34/4-18 S was drilled to vertical and measured depths of 2963 and 3015 meters, respectively, below sea level, and was terminated in the Raude Formation from the Late Triassic. The water depth is 360 metres.

The well has now been permanently plugged and abandoned.

The well 34/4-18 S was drilled using the Odfjell Drilling-owned Deepsea Stavanger drilling rig, which has moved on to drill wildcat well 35/10-8 S in production licence 293 B in the North Sea, where Equinor is also the operator.