Lundin Norway AS, operator of a production license in the Barents Sea, has found no oil or gas in a wildcat well it has drilled, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) said on Friday, in the latest of a string of disappointing well drilling in the Barents Sea.
Lundin Norway's well was drilled 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) northeast of the Johan Castberg field, and although it encountered traces of oil, the well is classified as dry, the NDP said.
Earlier this week, the Norwegian directorate said that Eni Norge AS, the Norwegian unit of Italy's major Eni, had completed the drilling of a wildcat well 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) southwest of the Goliat field, but it proved dry as well.
This week's dry wells come after Statoil had an underwhelming drilling campaign in the Barents Sea this summer.
At the end of August, Statoil found no oil at its Korpfjell exploration well-the first well drilled in the Norwegian section of a formerly disputed area between Norway and Russia, and the northernmost wildcat well drilled on the Norwegian shelf.
Statoil did find small, non-commercial quantities of natural gas at Korpfjell, but it's not profitable to develop, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) said in its statement, adding that this was the first well to be drilled in the southeastern Barents Sea that was opened for exploration activity in 2013.
Related: Oil Prices Haven't Plateaued Yet
Korpfjell was the fourth well that Statoil had drilled in its 2017 exploration campaign in the Barents Sea, which has been fairly disappointing so far.
Earlier in August, Statoil made a small non-commercial gas-only discovery in the third well in the Barents Sea it had drilled in 2017, underwhelming earlier expectations that it could prove additional oil resources close to the Wisting discovery.
Statoil's first drilled Barents Sea well in 2017, the Kayak well in the Johan Castberg license, found oil totaling between 25 and 50 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalents, according to the Norwegian company. Two weeks later, in the Blåmann well between the Snøhvit and Goliat fields in the Barents Sea, Statoil found small volumes of gas, but its goal was to find oil.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More
Comments