Oil and gas company Wellesley Petroleum has drilled a dry well located north of the Gjøa field offshore Norway.
The wildcat well 6204/11-3 is located in production licence 829 in the Norwegian Sea where Wellesley is the operator.
Wellesley received a safety consent to drill the well using the Borgland Dolphin well in July 2020 and a drilling permit for the well in August.
The well was drilled about 75 kilometres north of the Gjøa field in the North Sea and 60 kilometres northwest of Florø.
According to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD), the objective of the well was to prove petroleum in reservoir rocks in the Lower Cretaceous (the Åsgard Formation).
The well did not encounter reservoir rocks in the Åsgard Formation. About 30 metres of aquiferous sandstone was encountered in underlying Jurassic rocks with moderate to very good reservoir quality.
The well is dry. The well was not formation-tested, but data acquisition was undertaken.
This is the first exploration well in production licence 829, which was awarded in APA 2015.
The well 6204/11-3 was drilled to a vertical depth of 1290 metres below sea level and was terminated in the basement rock.
The water depth at the site is 211 metres. The well has now been permanently plugged and abandoned.
Th well 6204/11-3 was drilled by the Borgland Dolphin drilling rig, which is now headed to Kvina Shipyard in Fedafjorden.