Exploration off Norway is yielding a good crop of oil and gas discoveries.
During the past 6 weeks four interesting strikes have been made, including the first discovery in the Nordland 11 area, north of the Haltenbanken area off mid-Norway.
The run of success has, for once, eclipsed exploration off the U.K., where drilling activity is close to returning to the high levels of 1986.
GOOD TIMING OFF THE U.K.
With new licenses on offer, most British wells are being drilled as tight holes. As a result, the center of U.K. attention continues to be an oil strike by Amerada Hess Ltd. in the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Scotland.
For the British Department of Energy, the Amerada discovery could not have been better timed. The 205/26a-3 wildcat lies between tracts on offer in the first U.K. licensing round consisting exclusively of frontier acreage in the Atlantic.
Amerada said it suspended the well after an oil test but revealed no details. Industry sources in London are enthusiastic and rate the discovery as the most significant in the underexplored region off western Scotland since the large-but still undeveloped-Clair heavy oil reservoir was found in 1977.
Across the median line, drilling off mid-Norway got a boost from the prospect of a gas pipeline for Heidrun field in the Haltenbanken area, which will act as the center for a gas gathering system covering the whole province.
The system also could buoy activity in the lightly explored Nordland 11 area immediately to the north, where Den norske stats oljeselskap AS's 6507/3-1 wildcat flowed 37.7 MMcfd of gas and a little more than 2,000 b/d of condensate. It's the first discovery of any size in the area.
Drilling also is getting under way in other areas near Haltenbanken which is, so far, the only area off mid-Norway where commercial volumes of oil and gas have been found.
In the More South area, south of Haltenbanken, Norsk Hydro has reentered the first well in the region, the 6205/3-1 wildcat, suspended in late 1989 for regulatory reasons. Norske Shell also has spudded the second More South well on 6306/10.
Saga Petroleum has spudded the first well in the Trondelag 11 area, southwest of Haltenbanken, immediately after testing a significant discovery on North Sea Block 34/7a south of Snorre field. Saga calls the structure Snorre C+ and will begin an appraisal program early next month.
A NORSK HYDRO BEGINNING
The latest round of discoveries off Norway was started by Norsk Hydro with a 6,101 b/d flow of 31 gravity oil on the Omega South structure, south of Oseberg field.
The smallest of the strikes was made by BP Petroleum Development Norway in the southern part of Norwegian waters close to the South Eldfisk area, where Phillips Petroleum Co. Norway made the first oil discovery on a Jurassic structure under the producing chalk.
BP's Jurassic well to 15,500 ft flowed 8 MMcfd of gas and 1,302 b/d of condensate and confirmed the prospectivity of the Jurassic. That could give a boost to drilling under the well-explored chalk around the Greater Ekofisk area.
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