Equinor and its licence partners have made an oil discovery in the Polynya Tubåen prospect in the Barents Sea, with preliminary estimates putting recoverable resources at 2.3 to 3.8 million standard cubic metres of oil equivalent, or 14 to 24 million barrels.
The licence group will assess a possible tie-back to the Johan Castberg field as it reviews the discovery’s development options.
The discovery was made by wildcat well 7220/7-5 in production licence 532. The well was drilled about 16 km southwest of discovery well 7220/8-1 on the Johan Castberg field and around 210 km northwest of Hammerfest.
The well’s objective was to prove petroleum in Lower Jurassic reservoir rocks in the Tubåen Formation. It encountered a 26 m gas column and a 26 m oil column in a total of 39 m of reservoir rocks with good to very good reservoir quality.
The Tubåen Formation measured 125 m in total in the well. The gas/oil contact was encountered at 972 m below sea level, and the oil/water contact was recorded at 998 m below sea level.
The well was drilled by the COSLProspector rig to a vertical depth of 1,119 m below sea level and was terminated in the Fruholmen Formation in the Upper Triassic. Water depth at the site is 361 m. The well was not formation tested, but extensive data acquisition and sampling were conducted. It will now be permanently plugged and abandoned.
This was the 17th exploration well in production licence 532, which was awarded in the 20th licensing round in 2009. The licensees are Equinor as operator, Vår Energi and Petoro.
