ConocoPhillips makes ‘significant’ oil discovery off Norway

Oil major ConocoPhillips has made what it says is a significant oil discovery in production license 891 on the Slagugle prospect located 14 miles north-northeast of the Heidrun field in the Norwegian Sea.

ConocoPhillips is the operator of the license with an 80 per cent working interest. Pandion Energy is a license partner with 20 per cent working interest.

The 6507/5-10 was the first exploration well in production licence 891, which was awarded in APA 2016.

The company received a drilling permit from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) for the well in October 2020.

According to ConocoPhillips’ statement on Tuesday, preliminary estimates place the size of the discovery between 75 million and 200 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent.

Extensive data acquisition and sampling has been carried out in the discovery well 6507/5-10.

The future appraisal will be conducted to determine potential flow rates, the reservoir’s ultimate resource recovery and potential development plan.

The discovery well was drilled in 1,165 feet of water to a total depth of 7,149 feet using the Leiv Eiriksson drilling rig.

Matt Fox, executive vice president and chief operating officer, said: “This discovery marks our fourth successful exploration well on the Norwegian Continental Shelf in the last 16 months. All four discoveries have been made in well-documented parts of the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea and offer very low cost of supply resource additions that can extend our more than 50-year legacy in Norway”.

To remind, ConocoPhillips has also recently made a gas discovery southwest of the Skarv field in the Norwegian Sea.

The wildcat well 6507/4-1 (Warka) is located in production licence 1009 where ConocoPhillips is the operator.

The well was drilled about 27 kilometres southwest of the Skarv field in the central part of the Norwegian Sea and 240 kilometres northwest of Brønnøysund.

This well was also drilled using the Leiv Eriksson drilling rig.