Shell hits dust near Knarr

Oil major Shell has completed the drilling of a wildcat well near the Knarr field in the North Sea. The well is dry.

The well 34/5-2 S was drilled about 10 kilometers south-west of the Knarr field in the northern part of the North Sea and 125 km west of Florø in production license 373S where Shell is the operator.

The well was drilled by Scarabeo 8 semi-submersible drilling rig and investigated a prospect named Tyttebær.

Shell received consent from Norway’s Petroleum Safety Authority to use the the Scarabeo 8 drilling rig to drill the well 34/5-2 S in early June.

The objective of the well was to prove petroleum in Lower Jurassic reservoir rocks.

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) said on Monday that the well 34/5-2 S encountered about 85-metre thick rocks of the Cook formation, 50 meters of which were sandstone with generally poor to moderate reservoir quality. Data was acquired.

This is the ninth exploration well in production licence 373 S. The license was awarded in APA 2005.

The well was drilled to a vertical depth of 3672 metres below the sea surface and was terminated in the Amundsen formation in Lower Jurassic. Water depth is 387 metres. The well has been permanently plugged and abandoned.

The Scarabeo 8 will now be drilling wildcat well 6304/3-1 in the Norwegian Sea in production licence 832, where Shell is also the operator.