OKEA’s Skumnisse well comes up dry

Oil and gas company OKEA has not found oil at the appraisal well 6407/9-12 on the Skumnisse prospect, north-east of the Draugen field offshore Norway. The company said on Tuesday that well would be permanently plugged and abandoned as a dry well.

The well was drilled to a vertical depth of 1742 m below sea level within the Garn Formation. The water depth at the site is 243 meters. OKEA’s well targeted an extension of the Upper Jurassic Rogn Formation sandstone which forms the main reservoir of the producing Draugen field in the Norwegian Sea.

The log data from the well confirmed the presence of a number of clay-rich sandstone layers in the expected reservoir interval, thinner and with poorer reservoir quality than expected. No traces of hydrocarbons were observed.

“Core data have been acquired in the well and wireline log data form the rest of the data acquisition program. These data will be used to complete the evaluation of the well results and will be important for further exploration activity in the area around Draugen. Key questions about the regional development of the Rogn Formation sandstone and hydrocarbon migration in the area will be addressed,” OKEA said.

The well marks the conclusion of OKEA’s first operated drilling campaign, less than a year after the company took over operatorship of Draugen.

OKEA started its Draugen drilling campaign, using the Deepsea Nordkapp rig, in mid-October. The campaign consisted of appraisal wells Infill Ø (6407/9-11) and Skumnisse (6407/9-12).

OKEA last Tuesday said that it had completed drilling of the reservoir section of the Infill Ø well (6407/9-11) in the Draugen field.

The well targeted a possible unswept oil accumulation in the producing reservoir which could potentially be drained by a future oil producer well. The log data from the well confirmed the presence of an oil column at the well location.

Depth conversion of the seismic data was the principal pre-drill uncertainty for this well and the reservoir was encountered 5 m deeper than prognosed, but despite this, OKEA interprets that there is still a 2.5 m column of oil remaining at the top of the Rogn Formation reservoir at this location. The from the Infill well indicated that that particular area of the Draugen field was already being drained efficiently by existing wells and that it is therefore not necessary to invest in a new oil producer well to drain the remaining attic oil volume.

“The two wells, which were based on a slim, two casing string design, have been drilled safely and cost-effectively,” OKEA said on Tuesday, November 5, 2019.

The wells were drilled with the Odfjell Drilling semi-submersible drilling Deepsea Nordkapp, with Halliburton as the main service provider.

OKEA is the operator of the Draugen licenses PL093 and PL093 D with a 44.56% share. Partner companies are Petoro (47.88%) and Neptune Energy Norge (7.56%). OKEA bought its stake in the Draugen field, as well as in the Gjøa field, for NOK 4.5 billion ($525M) from Shell in November 2018.

Offshore Energy Today Staff

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