Norwegian oil and gas player Aker BP has come up empty after drilling an exploration well in the Norwegian Sea off the coast of Norway, with a semi-submersible rig owned by Italy’s Saipem.
Following a drilling permit for the well 6405/7-4 from the Norwegian Offshore Directorate (NOD), Aker BP spud the Rondeslottet prospect in the Norwegian Sea in production license 1005, which was awarded on March 1, 2019, and is valid until the same date in 2029.
Aker BP is the operator of the production license with a 40% interest, while its partners, Vår Energi and Norske Shell, hold 40% and 20% stakes, respectively. The drilling of the wildcat well was done using Saipem’s Scarabeo 8 semi-submersible rig.
With an accommodation capacity for 140 people and a maximum drilling depth of 35,000 feet (about 10,668 meters), Scarabeo 8 is a sixth-generation dual derrick deepwater semi-submersible rig. Aker BP extended the rig’s stay in September 2024, prolonging the unit’s assignment in Norway until the end of 2026.
The primary exploration target for the well 6405/7-4 in the Møre Basin, around 80 kilometers north of the Ormen Lange field and 175 kilometers northwest of Kristiansund, was to prove oil in Upper Cretaceous reservoir rocks in the Nise Formation.
The prospect was drilled to a vertical depth of 2,897 meters below sea level and terminated in the Kvitnos Formation in the Upper Cretaceous. The water depth at the site is 1,104 meters.
While the well encountered the Nise Formation with a total thickness of 204 meters, of which 11 meters were sandstone layers with poor reservoir quality, it is classified as dry. As a result, the well has been permanently plugged and abandoned.
This is not the first dry well the Norwegian firm has stumbled upon this year, as it also had no luck finding hydrocarbons at another recently drilled well in the Norwegian Sea weeks after its wildcat well 35/6-5 S turned out to be dry and two months after discovering no hydrocarbons in the well 34/6-7 S.
