Statoil announced a limited indications of oil exploration during drilling in the Omega Nord well which located six kilometers north-east of the Snorre field in the North Sea. However, the discovery might not be commercially viable due to the qualities of the sand and shale rocks.

The reason behind this exploration well was to confirm the existence of oil in upper Triassic reservoir rocks in the Lunde formation.

Head of infrastructure-led exploration in the North Sea, Tom Dreyer commented on the exploration and said: “We have achieved good results in infrastructure-led exploration the last few years, but this well did not produce the results we had hoped for”.

They also stated that no formation test was performed in the well, but extensive data gathering and sampling were made.

The exploration well 34/4-12 S was drilled by Ocean Vanguard, which will now drill exploration well 34/4-12 A in Snorre Unit from the same rig position. Moreover, this is the 12th exploration well in production license 057, which was awarded in the fourth licensing round in 1979.

The licensees in PL 057 include Statoil as the operator with 31.0%, Petoro AS with 30.0%, RWE Dea Norge AS with 24.5%, Idemitsu Petroleum Norge AS with 9.6% and Hess Norge AS with the remaining 4.9%.