The Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSA) has granted Statoil Petroleum AS (Statoil) consent to conduct exploration drilling in production licence 269 with the mobile drilling facility Transocean Leader.
The consent applies to drilling wildcat well 35/1-2 S in production licence 296 in the North Sea. The prospect to be explored has been named Soleie.
The well has the following geographical coordinates:
* 61° 51′ 56.0″ North
* 03° 03′ 20.6″ East
The drilling site is located in the northern part of the North Sea, approx. 67 kilometres northeast of the Snorre field and 72 kilometres northwest of Gjøa.
Water depth at the site is 409 metres.
The plan is to start drilling as soon as the Transocean Leader has completed the drilling of well 15/3-9 for Statoil. The planned activity has an estimated duration of 105 days. Statoil is the operator of production licence 269, with an ownership interest of 100 per cent.
The Transocean Leader is a semi-submersible mobile drilling facility owned and operated by Transocean Offshore North Sea Ltd. It was delivered from Hyundai Heavy Industries in Korea in 1987.
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Source: Ptil, July 11, 2010: