Norwegian state-owned energy giant Equinor has made a fresh gas discovery, which is a tie-back candidate to a giant field in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway.
While disclosing a new gas discovery in the Skred prospect in the Barents Sea, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate pointed out that Equinor drilled the well 7220/5-4 with COSL Drilling Europe’s COSL Prospector semi-submersible rig about 23 kilometers north of the well 7220/8-1 on the Johan Castberg field and 210 kilometers northwest of Hammerfest.
The objective of this well, which is the 15th exploration well in production license 532 , awarded in the 20th licensing round in 2009, was to prove petroleum in reservoir rocks from the Middle Jurassic. While the primary exploration target was the Stø Formation, the secondary exploration target was the Nordmela Formation.
The well 7220/5-4 encountered a 14-meter gas column in the Stø Formation, within sandstone totaling 70 meters and with good reservoir quality. The gas/water contact was encountered 1,849 meters below sea level. The well also encountered gas in a 3-meter-thick isolated sandstone layer in the lower part of the Nordmela Formation with moderate to good reservoir quality.
Moreover, the well encountered a 14-meter-thick sandstone layer above the primary exploration target from the Cretaceous, where a 1-2-meter-thick zone in the lower part of the reservoir was filled with oil. The reservoir quality is poor to moderate. While the well was not formation-tested, extensive volumes of data and samples were collected.
The well 7220/5-4 was drilled to a vertical depth of 2,144 meters below sea level and was terminated in the Fruholmen Formation from the Late Triassic. The water depth at the site is 415 meters. This well will now be permanently plugged and abandoned.
The preliminary calculations indicate the size of the discovery is between 0.3 and 0.5 billion standard cubic meters of recoverable gas, corresponding to 1.9 – 3.1 million barrels of oil equivalent.
According to the Norwegian Offshore Directorate, the licensees will assess the discovery with a view toward a possible tie-in to the Johan Castberg field, which was brought on stream in March 2025. This comes shortly after an oil discovery was made at the well 7720/7-DD-1H in the Johan Castberg area.
The field’s plateau production milestone was reached in June 2025, with production of around 220,000 boepd. The Norwegian operator plans to have two rigs, which will drill both new production and exploration wells in the areas around the Johan Castberg and Goliat fields.