Oil company Statoil has received consent from the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) to drill a well in the Hoop area in the Barents Sea with the Songa Enabler drilling rig.
According to the PSA’s statement on Thursday, the company has received consent to drill the well 7325/4-1 at Gemini Nord in the Barents Sea.
The well site lies in 447 meters of water some 275 kilometers from Nordkapp and 200 kilometers from Bjørnøya.
The drilling is estimated to last for 19 days and is scheduled to start in June using the Songa Enabler semi-submersible Cat D drilling rig.
The rig was delivered by the Daewoo yard in South Korea in 2016. It is registered in Norway and classified by DNV-GL. Songa Offshore received Acknowledgement of Compliance (AoC) for the rig from the PSA in July 2016.
Statoil plans to drill fie wells in the Barents Sea this year. The first of five, the Blåmann well , was spud on May 22 and a drilling permit for the second well, the Kayak , was issued by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate in early June. This makes the Gemini Nord well the third well in Statoil’s Barents Sea campaign.