Equinor has spudded the Kveikje well in the Norwegian North Sea, following a raft of promising nearby discoveries in recent months.
Kveikje is the primary prospect in licence PL293B, which lies in an area north of the giant Troll field in the Norwegian North Sea. Licence partners include operator Equinor (51%), DNO Norge (29%), INPEX Idemitsu (10%) and Longboat Energy (10%).
Drilling at Kveikje well 35/10-8S is being undertaken by the Deepsea Stavanger semi-submersible drilling rig and is expected to take up to four weeks.
The Kveikje well is close to recent discoveries, lying just 5 miles from the Swisher discovery and 6 miles from the Toppand discovery, where resources of around 21–33 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent (boe) were hailed in January.
The prospect is an Eocene Balder Formation injectite with seismic amplitude support, and has further potential upside in the underlying Paleocene Rokke and Late Cretaceous n’Roll secondary prospects.
Kveikje is estimated to contain gross mean prospective resources of 36 million boe with further gross potential upside estimated at 79 million boe. The chance of success at the prospect is estimated at 55%, with the key risks being trap presence and seal integrity.
Rokke and n’Roll have an additional 127 million boe of gross mean prospective resource with chances of success in the range of 14%-34%, based on operator estimates, Longboat Energy said in a 9 March update.
If successful, Kveikje could potentially form part of an area cluster development, the AIM-listed explorer said.
Indeed, Toppand marked the fifth discovery in the Troll and Fram area, where overall proven resources “might exceed 300 million barrels of oil equivalent” Equinor said.
Longboat has also seen promising results from the material Egyptian Vulture discovery, as well as Rødhette, though last month reported a dry well at Ginny/Hermine.
Further prospects will be drilled later in the year at Cambozola and Copernicus.
The partners will make a further announcement when drilling operations have been completed.
Longboat chief executive Helge Hammer commented: “I am pleased that we have now commenced drilling operations for the fifth exploration well in our drilling programme.
“Longboat Energy’s 2022 exploration programme offers shareholders a unique opportunity to gain exposure to a drilling portfolio of three wells targeting net mean prospective resource potential of 69 million boe with an additional 256 million boe of upside.”
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