Neptune comes up dry in North Sea well

Oil and gas company Neptune Energy has concluded the drilling of a wildcat well near the Snorre field in the Norwegian North Sea, but the well turned out to be dry.

The well 33/6-5 S is located in production licence 882, and Neptune is the operator, while Concedo, Idemitsu Petroleum, and Petrolia NOCO act as partners. This licence contains the Dugong discovery, which was one of the largest discoveries on the Norwegian Continental Shelf in 2020.

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) reported on Wednesday that the wildcat well was drilled about 10 kilometres northwest of the Snorre field in the northern part of the North Sea and 160 kilometres west of Florø.

The well’s primary exploration target was to prove petroleum in Middle Jurassic reservoir rocks (the Rannoch Formation). The NPD explained that the secondary exploration target was to prove petroleum in the Statfjord Group in the Lower Jurassic, depending on oil in the Rannoch Formation.

The well 33/6-5 S encountered around 90 metres of the Rannoch Formation with sandstone of moderate to good reservoir quality. It also encountered around 30 metres of the Draupne Formation in the Upper Jurassic, with 5 metres of intra-Draupne sandstone of poor to moderate reservoir quality.

The well is dry and it was terminated at a shallower level than the planned secondary exploration target in the Statfjord Group. The NPD confirms that this is the fourth exploration well in production licence 882, which was awarded in APA 2016.

The well was drilled to a vertical depth of 3,428 metres and a measured depth of 3,488 metres below sea level and was terminated in the Drake Formation in the Lower Jurassic. The water depth at the site is 315 metres and the well has been permanently plugged and abandoned.

It was drilled by the Deepsea Yantai drilling rig, which will now drill development wells in production licence 586 in the Norwegian Sea, where Neptune Energy is the operator of the Fenja field.