Oil company Aker BP has received consent from the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) to drill an appraisal well in the Barents Sea with Odfjell Drilling’s Deepsea Stavanger drilling rig.
The well is located in the Aker BP-operated production license 659 in the Barents Sea off Norway.
The PSA said on Monday that the well, designated 7221/10-1, would be drilled to appraise the Svanefjell discovery.
The Deepsea Stavanger will drill the well some 65 kilometers north-north-east of the Snøhvit field in a water depth of 357 meters.
According to the safety watchdog, the planned start-up of operations will be in May 2018.
As for the Deepsea Stavanger drilling rig, it is a GVA 7500 type semi-submersible, built in South Korea in 2010, owned and operated by Odfjell Drilling. The rig was issued an Acknowledgement of Compliance (AoC) by the PSA back in March 2017.
It is worth noting that Aker BP was given both a drilling permit by the NPD and a consent from the PSA to use the Deepsea Stavanger rig on a Svanefjell wildcat earlier this month. Drilling of the Svanefjell wildcat well was scheduled to begin in April.