OMV announces oil discovery in the Barents Sea

OMV (Norge) AS has made the Barents Sea’s northernmost oil discovery, on the undrilled Hoop high offshore Norway with an estimated 60-160 million bbl of recoverable oil and 10-40 bcf of recoverable gas.

The company said its 7324/8-1 Wisting Central vertical rank wildcat on PL 537 proved the company’s exploration concept and opens a new play fairway. Total depth is 905 m in 373 m of water. The well, 310 km north of Hammerfest and 120 km northeast of the Johan Castberg discovery area, is to be permanently plugged.

The well’s objective was to confirm the exploration concept and to prove hydrocarbons in Middle to Lower Jurassic reservoir rocks of the Upper Realgrunnen Subgroup on the Hoop high.

OMV (Norge) said, “The well results are a breakthrough for the regional exploration activities as the presence of good quality oil shows the possible large potential of an area, which will see more exploration drilling in the near future.”

OMV has as a joint venture partner interests in three more licenses in the Hoop high area. Further exploratory drilling on one other license is expected in 2014.

“Considering equivalent segments, immediately adjacent to the first one, recoverable oil volumes for the total of PL 537 are seen in a size order of 200-500 million bbl of oil equivalent,” OMV (Norge) said.

“Further drilling is needed to confirm the full license potential; a second well—Wisting Main—pursuing a different, deeper target will be spud immediately after Wisting Central and is expected to contribute valuable information.”

OMV (Norge) is operator with a 25% share in the license. Petoro, Idemitsu, and Tullow have 20% each, and Statoil has 15%.