Lundin Norway is to start drilling an appraisal well on the massive Johan Sverdrup discovery in June/July.
The firm was given consent for the drilling and production testing of appraisal well 16/2-13 by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate today.
The drilling will be carried out using the Transocean Arctic mobile facility and is estimated to last for 43 days.
Lundin is part of the partnership that last year discovered the Johan Sverdrup field, previously known as Aldous/Avaldsnes and thought to be the third largest Norwegian find.
Statoil said it used new ways to interpret geological formations and seismic data to help open up the field – techniques he thought could also be used in the North Sea.