Statoil announced a gas discovery made in the Pingvin prospect in the Barents Sea, has been found non-commercial.
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| Map of Pingvin prospect. From Statoil. |
According to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD), Pingvin has been permanently plugged and abandoned.
7319/12-1 is located in PL713 approximately 65km northwest of the Johan Castberg discovery and 300km northwest of Hammerfest.
The well, drilled by the Transocean Spitsbergen drilling rig, proved a 15m gas column in the well path. Statoil estimates the volumes in Pingvin to be in the range of 30 to 120 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent.
“Pingvin is the first well drilled in PL713 – a large frontier area northwest of Johan Castberg awarded in the 22nd concession round,” says Dan Tuppen, Statoil VP of exploration, Barents Sea and Norwegian Sea. “For a discovery in this area to be commercially viable it needs to be an oil accumulation of a significant size. A gas discovery does not have commercial value at present.”
The NPD says preliminary estimates place the size of the discovery between 5 to 20 billion m cu. of recoverable gas.
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The Transocean Spitsbergen, from Transocean. |
The objective was to prove petroleum in Late Cretaceous reservoir rocks. Pingvin was drilled to a vertical depth of 1500m below the sea surface in Cretaceous rock and encountered gas in reservoir rocks from the Early Palaeocene or Late Cretaceous Age with good reservoir quality. Water depth at the site is 422m.
"On the positive side, it is encouraging that the first well drilled in this unexplored area has proven hydrocarbons in sandstones,” says Tuppen. “This indicates that we have both a reservoir and a working hydrocarbon system in the area, and creates a good basis for further subsurface work in the license.”
Statoil had resumed drilling operations of Pingvin on 10 September after receiving permission from the Norwegian Environment Agency. Operations came to a halt in August due to an appeal against its environmental permit.
The Transocean Spitsbergen is now moving to drill Statoil-operated wildcat well 7220/2-1 in production license 714 located in the Barents Sea.
Statoil is operator of 7319/12-1 with 40% interest with partners RN Nordic Oil AS (20%), North Energy ASA (20%) and Edison International Norway Branch (20%).
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