Vår Energi drills dry well at Price Updip prospect in North Sea Balder area
Vår Energi and its partner Kistos Energy drilled a dry well at the Prince Updip prospect in the Balder area in the North Sea. The well has been permanently plugged.
Well 25/8-C-23 D, the 13th exploration well in production license 027, was drilled from the Ringhorne platform, just over 200 km west of Stavanger, to a vertical depth of 2,318 m subsea. It was terminated in basement rock. Water depth at the site is 129 m.
Balder and Ringhorne Øst fields are contained within the license, where exploration activity in 2021—wells 25/8-20 S, B, and C—proved hydrocarbons at two levels.
The objective of the well drilled by Vår Energi was to prove petroleum in the Prince Updip prospect in the Skagerrak formation in the Upper Triassic. The secondary exploration target was to prove petroleum in basement rock.
The well encountered the Skagerrak formation with a thickness of about 127 m, 18 m of which were sandstone layers with moderate to good reservoir quality. Certain sandstone layers had hydrocarbon shows. The well drilled about 30 m into basement rock; this interval had no reservoir properties.
Necessary data was collected while drilling the well.