Aker BP in minor oil discovery in North Sea

Aker BP has concluded the drilling of wildcat well 2/1-17 S and made a minor oil discovery south of the Gyda field in the North Sea offshore Norway. 

The well 2/1-17 S is located in production license 019 C where Aker BP is the operator. It was drilled about 10 kilometers south of the Gyda field in the southern part of the North Sea, and about 280 kilometers southwest of Stavanger.

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) said last Friday that the primary exploration target for the well was to prove petroleum in Upper Jurassic reservoir rocks (the Ula Formation). The secondary exploration target was to prove petroleum in deeper reservoir rocks in the Jurassic and Triassic (the Eldfisk, Bryne and Skagerrak Formations).

The primary exploration target was not present in the well. In the secondary exploration target, the Eldfisk Formation was encountered with a layer of about five meters of oil-bearing sandstones with good reservoir quality. The oil/water contact was not encountered. The Bryne and Skagerrak Formations were not drilled.

Preliminary estimates place the size of the discovery between 0.5 and 1.5 million standard cubic meters (Sm3) of recoverable oil equivalent. The discovery is assessed as not commercial.

The well was not formation-tested, but extensive volumes of data have been collected.

According to the NPD, this is the second exploration well in production license 019 C, which was awarded in 1998.

The well 2/1-17 S was drilled to a vertical depth of 4322 meters and a measured depth of 4334 meters below sea level. It was terminated in the Tyne Group in the Upper Jurassic.

The water depth at the site is 66 meters. The well will now be permanently plugged and abandoned.

The well 2/1-17 S was drilled by the Maersk Interceptor drilling rig, which will now drill development wells in production license 001 B on the Ivar Aasen field in the North Sea, where Aker BP is also the operator.

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