Norway’s Equinor spuds North Sea wildcat well

Norway’s Equinor spuds North Sea wildcat well

Norwegian oil and gas giant Equinor has started drilling operations on the Kveikje exploration well located in the North Sea offshore Norway.

Kveikje is the primary prospect in licence PL293B, which lies in an area north of the giant Troll field in the Norwegian North Sea with many producing fields and significant infrastructure. The licence is operated by Equinor with DNO Norge, Inpex Idemitsu, and Longboat Energy as partners.

Longboat said in a statement on Wednesday that the Kveikje well will be drilled close to recent discoveries, lying c. 8km from the Swisher discovery and c. 10km from the Toppand discovery. If successful, Kveikje could potentially form part of an area cluster development.

Equinor secured a drilling permit from the Norwegian authorities for two exploration wells, including the Kveikje well, in February 2022.

The prospect is an Eocene Balder Formation injectite with seismic amplitude support. Injectite reservoirs are typically characterised by excellent reservoir properties, with recent exploration successes of this type including the King and Frosk discoveries in the Balder and Alvheim area respectively. The exploration well has further potential upside in the underlying Paleocene Rokke and Late Cretaceous n’Roll secondary prospects.

According to Longboat, Kveikje is estimated to contain gross mean prospective resources of 36 mmboe with further potential upside estimated at 79 mmboe on a gross basis. The chance of success associated with the Kveikje prospect is 55 per cent with the key risks being trap presence and seal integrity.

Rokke and n’Roll have an additional 127 mmboe of gross mean prospective resource with chances of success in the range of 14-34 per cent which have not been reviewed by ERCE and are based on operator estimates.

The drilling of the Kveikje well 35/10-8S is being undertaken by the Deepsea Stavanger semi-submersible drilling rig and is expected to take up to four weeks to drill.

Helge Hammer, Chief Executive of Longboat said that this is the fifth exploration well in the company’s drilling programme.

Hammer added: “Longboat Energy’s 2022 exploration programme offers shareholders a unique opportunity to gain exposure to a drilling portfolio of three wells targeting net mean prospective resource potential of 69MMboe with an additional 256 MMboe of upside.”

Published: 09-03-2022