Wellesley drills duster in North Sea

Transocean Arctic; Source: Wiki Commons; Author: Marcusroos – under the public domain

Wellesley Petroleum is in the process of completing the drilling of wildcat well 35/12-7 located near the Grosbeak oil and gas discovery in the North Sea. The well is dry. 

The well 35/12-7 is located in production license 925 where Wellesley is the operator with an ownership interest of 90 per cent. Concedo is a licensee with 10 per cent.

This is the third exploration well in production license 925, which was awarded in APA 2017.

Wellesley was granted a drilling permit to drill the 35/12-7 exploration well, which aimed to investigate a prospect named Serin, and safety consent to use the Transocean Arctic rig for the well back in late May.

The well was drilled about 2 km south of the 35/12-2 (Grosbeak) oil and gas discovery in the northern part of the North Sea, and 80 km west of Florø.

The objective of the well was to prove petroleum in Upper Jurassic reservoir rocks (the Heather formation).

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) informed on Wednesday that the well encountered two units of sandstone in the Heather formation. The upper unit had traces of gas in poorly developed sandstone and about seven meters of aquiferous sand with good reservoir properties. The lower unit is about 25 meters of aquiferous sandstone with good reservoir properties. The well is classified as dry.

The well was drilled to a vertical depth of 2726 meters below the sea surface. It was terminated in the Oseberg formation in the Middle Jurassic. Data acquisition and sampling have been carried out.

Water depth at the site is 358 meters. The well will be permanently plugged and abandoned.

The well was drilled by the Transocean Arctic drilling rig, which will now proceed to production license 248 I in the North Sea, to drill wildcat well 35/11-21 S, where Wellesley Petroleum is also the operator.