Oil discovery near Njord

“It’s very positive that we’ve now found oil in the Halten Bank area,” comments Rune Adolfsen, operations vice president for Njord.

“Light and fine crude from Gygrid could be phased into Njord and extend the commercial life of a field now in its tail production phase.

“I’m very pleased with the exploration commitment in this area close to existing infrastructure, and that the work is yielding results.”

Made by an exploration and an appraisal well, the discovery contains 20-30 million barrels of recoverable oil.

Neither well was formation tested, but extensive data and cores were gathered.

“It’s interesting that we’ve found oil in the same area where we encountered gas last year in Galtvort,” says Sivert Jørgenvåg, head of infrastructure-led exploration on the Halten Bank.

“Results from these two finds will be used in our further work with the prospectivity of this licence.”

The wells were drilled from West Alpha, which will now be moved to production licence 407 in the North Sea to drill appraisal well 17/12-4 for operator BG Norge AS.

Facts:   In addition to operator StatoilHydro with 30%, licensees in production licence 348 are GDF Suez E&P Norge AS 20%, Norwegian Energy Company ASA 17.5%, E.ON Ruhrgas Norge AS 17.5%, Petoro AS 7.5%, Concedo ASA 5% and VNG Norge Operations AS 2.5% Designations were 6407/8-5 S for the exploration well and 6407/8-5 A for the appraisal The exploration well proved oil in Lower Jurassic reservoir rocks, and was drilled to a vertical depth of 2,347 metres below sea level. It terminated in the Lower Jurassic Åre formation Drilled as a sidetrack from the exploration well, the appraisal confirmed the oil column and delineated the discovery. It also found oil in Middle Jurassic rocks. The well was drilled to a vertical depth of 2,123 metres and terminated in the Lower Jurassic Tilje formation These wells are the third and fourth in PL 348, where the water depth is 247 metres. They will now be permanently plugged and abandoned