Lundin Energy cleared to drill North Sea wildcat well

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) has granted Swedish oil firm Lundin Energy a drilling permit for a well in the North Sea.

NPD said on Wednesday that Lundin Energy was given a license to drill a wildcat well in the production license 976, in the North Sea, offshore Norway. The permit granted the oil company permission to drill the 17/8-1 well.

Lundin Energy will use Odfjell Drilling’s 2010-built Deepsea Stavanger offshore drilling rig for the operation.

As for the rig, the Deepsea Stavanger is a semi-submersible drilling rig of the GVA 7500 type, built by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering in South Korea.

Lundin Energy’s Norwegian subsidiary Lundin Energy Norway is the operator of production license 976 with a 50 per cent stake. The two other partners in the license are Repsol Norge and Petoro with 30 and 20 per cent, respectively.

The well will be drilled some 65 kilometres southeast of the Johan Sverdrup oil field. This is the first exploration well to be drilled in the licence.

According to a consent secured for the same well from the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA), Lundin will target the Dovregubben prospect sitting in a water depth of 119 meters. The operations, expected to start in October 2021, are expected to last some 27 days.

It is worth noting that Lundin Energy and Odfjell Drilling signed a contract for the Deepsea Stavanger rig in early March 2021, following a letter of intent from January 2021.

After an initial agreement for one firm well plus eight optional wells, the deal was changed to three firm wells plus six optional wells. The firm scope has a contractual value of approx $33 million.

The contract with Lundin is set to begin in the third quarter of 2021, back-to-back with Deepsea Stavanger’s upcoming contract with Aker BP.

The initial contract scope with Aker BP is five wells and has an estimated contract value of up to $44 million.