No hydrocarbons for Polish firm in Norwegian Sea well

PGNiG Upstream Norway, a Norwegian subsidiary of Poland’s oil and gas company PGNiG, has completed the drilling of a wildcat well in the Norwegian Sea but came up empty as no hydrocarbons were found in this well.

PGNiG started drilling the Copernicus wildcat well at the end of August using the Deepsea Yantai rig managed by Odfjell Drilling two weeks after a drilling permit was secured from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) and more than two months after getting consent for exploration drilling in block 6608/1 from the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA).

The Copernicus prospect lies on the Utgard High in the Vøring Basin region of the Norwegian Sea and previous estimates indicated it contained gross mean prospective resources of 254 mmboe with further potential upside to bring the total to 471 mmboe.

This gas prospect is located in production licence 1017, where PGNiG Upstream Norway is the operator with an ownership interest of 50 per cent while its partners are Equinor (40 per cent) and Longboat Energy Norge (10 per cent).

In an update on Thursday, Longboat revealed that the Copernicus exploration well 6608/1-1S offshore Norway, which was targeting Plio-Pleistocene formations in the Vøring Basin region of the Norwegian Sea, was dry. It will now be plugged and abandoned.

According to the company, the well was drilled to a total vertical depth of 2,400 metres below sea level and the drilling operations were carried out well within the time schedule and below budget. While background gas readings were recorded, the well failed to encounter any effective reservoir, outlined Longboat. The firm says that an analysis of the data collected remains ongoing to understand the observed bright seismic amplitude anomaly and any remaining prospectivity in the area.

Commenting on this, Helge Hammer, Chief Executive of Longboat, remarked: “Naturally, we are disappointed that the Copernicus well was not a success but we look forward to continuing our fully-funded, gas-focused exploration programme with the results of the Oswig well expected shortly.”

Operated by OMV Norge, a Norwegian subsidiary of OMV, the Oswig well is being drilled by the Maersk Intrepid jack-up rig.