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Equinor, Partners Strike Oil at Two Targets at Well Offshore Norway

Share Print Bookmark    |    Tuesday,June 18,2019

Equinor, along with its partners Ineos E&P and Faroe Petroleum, have made an oil and gas discovery in exploration well Snadd Outer Outer/Black Vulture in production licence 159B in the Norwegian Sea.

The well had two different reservoir targets; an upper drilling target containing 2-12 MMBOE and a lower target with an estimated volume of 1-48 MMBOE.

Drilling of well number 6507/3-13 Snadd Outer Outer/Black Vulture started on 27 April around 14 kilometres south-west of the Norne field in the northern part of the Norwegian Sea.

The operation started by drilling to a good 2800 metres to the first target Snadd Outer Outer, where gas was proven. Further drilling down to 3200 metres to the second target, Black Vulture, hit oil. The well volume totals 3-60 million boe before further delineation is made.

Nick Ashton, Equinor's Senior VP of Exploration, said: “The deepest target is following up the Cape Vulture discovery of 2017, offering further opportunities on the Nordland Ridge, and we are very happy about today’s discovery. Snadd Outer Outer/Black Vulture and Cape Vulture combined have in fact proven to be a success story for cretaceous reservoirs off the coast of Nordland, encouraging us to pursue further opportunities in the area going forward.

“We are very pleased with the results of both targets. This was of course what we hoped for, and it isn’t given that we find both oil and gas in the same well. The volumes are broadly estimated, and operational challenges prevented side-tracking. We are evaluating both the time and place for further delineation to give us more accurate volume estimates."

Carmen and Osprey proved resources in the range of 10-39 million boe in 2017, Hades and Iris, Balderbrå and Cape Vulture combined proved between 134 and 435 million boe in 2018, while Ragnfrid North, Jasper and Snadd Outer Outer/Black Vulture have proven between 12 and 101 million boe so far this year. The total volume for this period is in the range of 156-575 million boe. Preliminary estimates indicate that more than 80 percent of the volumes are commercially viable.

Transocean Spitsbergen is currently moving to production licence 502 to drill the Equinor-operated exploration well Klaff in the North Sea.