Oil company Repsol Norge has found weak traces of gas during drilling of a wildcat well in production license 705 in the Norwegian Sea, classifying the well as dry.
Repsol Norge is the operator of the license with an ownership interest of 40 percent. Other licensees are DEA Norge with 30 percent and M Vest Energy with 30 percent interest.
The area in this license consists of blocks 6705/8 and 6705/9, in addition to parts of blocks 6705/7 and 6705/10.
The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) said on Friday that the 6705/7-1 well was drilled about 80 kilometers northwest of the Aasta Hansteen field in the northern part of the Norwegian Sea, in a prospect named Stordal.
The company got a drilling permit to drill the Stordal wildcat in February and a consent to use the Transocean Spitsbergen rig for the well in early March.
According to the NPD, the objective of the well was to prove petroleum in Upper Cretaceous reservoir rocks (Nise formation).
The well encountered two reservoir intervals with a total thickness of about 200 meters of sandstone in the Nise formation with good to moderate reservoir quality. The well is classified as dry with only weak traces of gas.
NPD added that Repsol conducted data acquisition and sampling on the well, the first one to be drilled in the license. The license was awarded in the 22nd licensing round in 2013.
The 6705/7-1 well was drilled to a vertical depth of 3,250 meters below the sea surface in a water depth of 1,404 meters using the Transocean Spitsbergen drilling rig. The well has been permanently plugged and abandoned.
The Transocean Spitsbergen will, following a short break, proceed to the UK shelf to drill three wells for Statoil.