The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) has granted Wintershall Dea Norge, a Norwegian unit of the German oil company Wintershall Dea, a drilling permit for well 6604/6-1, located in the Norwegian Sea.
Wintershall Dea Norge has made a minor oil discovery in the the Scarabeo 8 drilling facility. As per preliminary estimates, the size of the new oil discovery in the North Sea is not commercially viable as it has less than a million standard cubic meters (Sm3) of recoverable oil.
The drilling program for well 6604/6-1 relates to the drilling of wildcat wells in production licence 894. Wintershall Dea Norge AS is the operator with an ownership interest of 40 per cent. The other licensees are Equinor Energy AS (40 per cent) and Petoro AS (20 per cent).
The area in this licence consists of parts of blocks 6604/5, 6604/6, 6605/4, 6605/5 and 6605/7. The well will be drilled approx. 56 kilometers south of the Asterix discovery (6705/10-1), 15 kilometers east of the Balderbrå discovery (6604/5-1) and 110 kilometers southwest of the Aasta Hansteen field.
Production licence 894 was awarded on 10 February 2017 (APA 2016). This is the second well to be drilled in the licence.
Scarabeo 8 is a semi-submersible drilling rig of the Moss CS50 MKII type, operated by Saipem Norge. It was built in Russia and Italy and put into service in 2012.