Wellesley picks up drilling permit for North Sea wildcat

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) has granted Wellesley Petroleum a drilling permit for a wildcat well in the North Sea.

The well 35/4-2 is located in production license 931 where Wellesley is the operator with an ownership interest of 60 percent. DNO Norge is a licensee with 40 percent.

The area in this license consists of the southeastern part of block 34/6, the northeastern part of block 34/9, southwestern part of block 35/4, and the northwestern part of block 35/7. The well will be drilled about 30 kilometers south of the Peon discovery.

Production license 931 was awarded on March 2, 2018, in APA 2017. This is the first well to be drilled in the license.

The company has already obtained consent from the Petroleum Safety Authority to drill the well using the Transocean Arctic drilling rig.

According to the safety watchdog, the drilling will begin in early December 2018 and is estimated to last 17 days.

As for the rig, the Transocean Arctic is a semi-submersible drilling rig of the Marosso 56 type, built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan in 1987. It is classified by DNV GL and registered in the Marshall Islands, operated by Transocean and received an Acknowledgement of Compliance (AoC) from the PSA in July 2004.