Wintershall Dea cleared to use West Mira rig on Nova field

Oil and gas company Wintershall Dea has received consent from the offshore safety body, the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA), for production drilling and completion on the Nova field using the West Mira drilling rig.

The Nova field is located in the Norwegian North Sea, 120km northwest of Bergen.

The expected recoverable reserves from the field are around 80 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe), of which the majority will be oil. The Nova field is expected to come on stream in 2021.

The Nova field is being developed as a subsea tieback connecting two templates to the existing Gjøa platform, which is operated by Neptune Energy. Gjøa will process the production fluids and provide water injection and gas lift to the Nova field.

The PSA said on Monday that consent to use the West Mira on Nova has a duration of 388 days.

According to the offshore safety body, the agreement includes drilling and completion on the field.

As for the West Mira, it is operated by Seadrill during drilling operations on the Nova field.

Wintershall contracted the rig for work on Nova in June 2018. Should all options for the rig be exercised, West Mira is expected to remain contracted to Wintershall until the first quarter of 2022.

The initially arranged West Mira six-well drilling campaign on Nova kicked off with a debut well in November 2019.

As for recent developments on the field, Aker Solutions completed two manifolds for the Nova field and handed them over to Subsea 7 in early March 2020.

As the operator, Wintershall Dea holds a 45 per cent share in the Nova project. Other project partners are Capricorn Norge (a subsidiary of Cairn Energy) and Spirit Energy Norge with 20 per cent each along with Edison Norge which holds the remaining 15 per cent.