ConocoPhillips drills dry hole near Balder field
ConocoPhillips Skandinavia AS drilled a dry hole in the central part of the North Sea about 30 km northwest of Balder field and 205 km west of Stavanger in 127 m of water. Exploration well 25/7-10 is classified as dry, with oil shows. Licensees will assess the result as it pertains to further prospectivity in the license. Data acquisition and sampling have been carried out and the well has been permanently plugged.
The well, the second in production license (PL) 782 S, was drilled by the Transocean Norge drilling rig to a vertical depth of 4,470 m subsea. It was terminated in the Heather formation in the Middle Jurassic (OGJ Online June 28, 2022).
The objective was to prove petroleum in Upper Jurassic reservoir rocks (the Intra-Draupne formation).
The well encountered thin sandstone layers totaling about 14 m in the Draupne formation with poor reservoir quality. Oil was collected from an isolated sandstone layer with limited extension, which is why no recoverable volumes can be estimated from this interval.
In the Heather formation (Middle Jurassic), the well encountered 29 m of sandstone with poor reservoir quality.
ConocoPhillips Skandinavia is operator at PL935 (40%) with partners Equinor Energy AS (20%), Aker BP ASA (20%), and Wintershall Dea Norge AS (20%).
Alex Procyk | Upstream Editor
Alex Procyk is Upstream Editor at Oil & Gas Journal. He has also served as a principal technical professional at Halliburton and as a completion engineer at ConocoPhillips. He holds a BS in chemistry (1987) from Kent State University and a PhD in chemistry (1992) from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).
