One of the biggest oil discoveries in the North Sea in years may not be quite as big as hoped, Sweden’s Lundin Petroleum said yesterday.
It said that after drilling its latest appraisal well on its share of the field it was thought to contain the “lower half” of previous estimates.
Johan Sverdrup, which straddles two licences, one operated by Lundin and one by Statoil, was discovered in 2010 and was originally thought to be two separate fields – Aldous and Avaldsnes.
Acknowledged as the largest oil discovery in the North Sea since the mid-1980s, it has been estimated to contain up to 3.3billion barrels of oil – with 800million to 1.8billion of that in Lundin’s licence area.
But Ashley Heppenstall, president and chief executive of Lundin, said yesterday: “The results of the appraisal drilling to date taken as a whole lead us
to the view that the current most likely mid-case
Johan Sverdrup resources located in PL501 will be within the lower half of
the previously guided 800million to 1.8billion barrels of oil equivalent range.”