No oil for Lundin after drilling in North Sea

Oil and gas company Lundin Energy is in the process of concluding the drilling of a wildcat well near the Solveig field in the North Sea after encountering disappointing results.

The well 16/4-12 is located in production licence 981 where Lundin is the operator. Targeting the Merckx exploration prospect, the well was drilled about 1 kilometre west of the Solveig field in the North Sea and 190 kilometres west of Stavanger.

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) informed on Friday that the well’s primary exploration target was to prove petroleum in sandstones in the Ty Formation from the Palaeocene. The secondary exploration target was to prove petroleum in porous dolomite in the Zechstein Group from the Permian Age.

The well encountered 58 metres of sandstone in the Ty Formation with good to very good reservoir quality.

In the secondary exploration target, the well encountered 12 metres of dolomitic rocks in the Zechstein Group with poor to moderate reservoir quality.

The well 16/4-12 also encountered two intervals of sandstone from an undefined age between the Cretaceous and Triassic. The upper interval has a thickness of 16 metres with moderate to good reservoir quality. The lower interval has a thickness of 15 metres with good to very good reservoir quality. Data acquisition has been carried out and the well is dry.

This is the first exploration well in production licence 981, which was awarded in APA 2018.

Lundin drilled the well 16/4-12 to a vertical depth of 2141 metres below sea level and was terminated in the Zechstein Group from the Permian Age. The water depth at the site is 100 metres. The well will be permanently plugged and abandoned.

The well was drilled by the Deepsea Stavanger drilling rig, which is now moving on to drill wildcat well 17/8-1 in production licence 976 in the North Sea, where Lundin Energy Norway is also the operator.

The rig has recently been used for the drilling of wildcat well 16/1-34 S and appraisal well 16/1-34 A on the 16/1-29 S (Lille Prinsen) oil and gas discovery, also for Lundin.