Equinor has, together with partners Petoro, ConocoPhillips and Repsol, made an oil discovery from the Visund A platform in the Telesto exploration well in the northern part of the North Sea. The resources are estimated at 12-28 million barrels of recoverable oil.
The Telesto exploration well was drilled about 2.5 kilometers east of the Visund A platform and 155 kilometers west of Florø in the Equinor-operated Tampen area on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS). It is well number 34/8-18 S in production licence 120, spudded on February 9.
According to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD), the well encountered an oil column of about 115 meters in the upper and lower part of the Statfjord group, with effective reservoir of 17 and 20 meters, respectively, in sandstone mainly with moderate reservoir quality. In the upper part of the Lunde formation in the Upper Triassic, about 15 meters of aquiferous sandstone with poor reservoir quality was encountered. The oil-water contact was encountered in the lower Statfjord group at about 3,170 meters below sea level.
Nick Ashton, Equinor’s senior vice president for exploration in Norway and the UK, said, “These are profitable barrels that can be quickly tied in to existing infrastructure and generate substantial revenues for society. Infrastructure-led exploration is an important part of our roadmap for the NCS.”
The licensees will consider linking the discovery to existing infrastructure on the Visund field.
Gunnar Nakken, Equinor’s senior vice president for Operations West, said, “We have a well developed infrastructure that enables high generation of value in the North Sea. We have set ourselves an ambitious goal of sustaining high production from the NCS for decades, and discoveries like this are essential towards this end. It will be natural to tie in the resources to the Visund A platform.”
This is the 26th exploration well in production licence 120. The licence was awarded in 1985 in licensing round 10-A.
Water depth at the site is 335 meters. Well 34/8-18 S was drilled to respective measured and vertical depths of 6,039 and 3,298 meters below the sea surface, and was terminated in the Lunde formation from the Late Triassic Age.
The well was not formation-tested, but geological data have been acquired for further analysis, and the well has been plugged and abandoned.
The Visund A platform will now move on to drill development wells on the Visund field.
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