OMV Norge Drills Dry Well Off the Coast of Norway

OMV Norge, a Norwegian subsidiary of Austria-headquartered oil and gas player OMV, recently completed drilling a dry well off the coast of Norway. The well was drilled using a semi-submersible rig managed by Odfjell Drilling, an offshore drilling contractor.

The drilling operation was carried out at the Hoffmann prospect in production license 1194, owned by OMV Norge (operator, 40%), Inpex Idemitsu Norway (30%), and Our Energy (30%). The wildcat well, named 6606/4-1 S, reached measured and vertical depths of 4,371 and 4,279 meters below sea level, respectively, terminating in the Nise Formation in the Upper Cretaceous.

The well was drilled in a water depth of 883 meters and marks the second exploration well in this production license in the Norwegian Sea. The first well, 6605/6-1 S, resulted in a gas discovery. The Hoffmann prospect, situated in the Vøring Basin approximately 65 kilometers south of the Aasta Hansteen field, was drilled by the Deepsea Bollsta rig, owned by Northern Ocean (NOL).

Although the primary objective of the well was to prove petroleum in Upper Cretaceous reservoir rocks in the Nise Formation, it encountered a 19-meter thick sandstone layer with moderate reservoir quality and gas shows. Despite the gas shows, the well is classified as dry and will be permanently plugged and abandoned.

The Deepsea Bollsta rig, which secured a short-term contract on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) last year, is scheduled to move to its next assignment with Equinor. The rig, a sixth-generation semi-submersible of Moss CS60E design built in 2020, has a capacity to accommodate 140 personnel.