UK North Sea: Chimera well comes up dry for Cairn

Oil and gas company Cairn Energy has completed drilling of wildcat well 03/17a-3, known as Chimera, located in the UK North Sea. The well is dry.

The Chimera well is located in license P2312 where Cairn is the operator.

Cairn said in an update on Thursday that the objective of the well was to prove hydrocarbons in Paleocene Heimdal Sandstones within the Lista Formation. The well is dry.

The well 03/17a-3 was drilled by the Stena Don semi-submersible offshore drilling unit.

The well was drilled to a vertical depth of 1,830 metres below the sea surface and was terminated in the Lista Formation in the Paleocene. The well will now be permanently plugged and abandoned.

The well was drilled approximately 40 kilometres (km) north of the Kraken field, 140km east of Lerwick, and 400km north of Aberdeen. Water depth at the site is 135m.

Nautical Petroleum, a fully owned subsidiary of Cairn, was awarded a 100% operated interest in the license in the UK 29th Offshore Licensing Round in 2017. Cairn subsequently farmed out a 40% non-operated interest to Suncor Energy in 2018, and a further 15% non-operated interest to DNO North Sea (U.K.) Limited in 2019.