The Norwegian Offshore Directorate has granted Wellesley Petroleum a drilling permit for well 35/11-29 S in production license 248 C in the North Sea offshore Norway.
The exploration well will be drilled with COSL’s COSLPromoter rig, hired on behalf of 248 C license partners by Wellesley Petroleum, which holds 30% share in the license.
The partners in the license include Equinor as the operator of with 30%, and Petoro 40% share.
The COSLPromoter rig will drill in Toppand East are in the first half of 2024, with not exact date for the start of drilling campaign revealed.
According to the information from Wellesley Petroleum, the drilling is set to begin in the second quarter of 2024.
“We are pleased to secure a slot on the COSL Promoter rig to drill Toppand East in 2024. We thank the PL 248 C partners for their support to drill Toppand East, which is an attractive ILX target that has the potential to add significant volumes to Toppand and to the Ringvei Vest area development. We also thank Equinor for their help to secure a rig slot for this well which allows us accelerate exploration drilling activity in the area," said Chris Elliott, CEO of Wellesley.
COSLPromoter is a semi-submersible drilling rig designed to operate in water depths up to 750 meters.
This unit is designed for North Sea/Norwegian Sea and worldwide use in harsh environments. Station keeping is maintained by an 8-line mooring system or by dynamic position mode maintained by 6 fixed pitch, variable speed thrusters (DP3).
The recoverable reserves from Toppand East are estimated at 61 mmboe, according to Wellesley Petroleum.