Latest Troll Try Spits Dust

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) has revealed that Equinor Energy AS has drilled a dry well near the Troll field in the North Sea.

Wildcat well 31/2-23 S, which was drilled about three kilometers (km) west of the field, and about 120km northwest of Bergen, had an objective to prove petroleum in Middle Jurassic reservoir rocks in the Brent Group, the NPD outlined.

The well encountered the Brent Group with a thickness of around 135 meters, including sandstone layers of around 80 meters with good reservoir quality, according to the NPD, which noted that the well is dry and that data acquisition has been carried out.

Well 31/2-23 S was drilled to a vertical depth of 2,333 meters below sea level and was terminated in the Drake Formation in the Lower Jurassic, the NPD highlighted, adding that water depth at the site is 343 meters. The well was drilled by the Deepsea Stavanger facility, entered on May 9, completed on May 22, and plugged and abandoned on the same date, according to NPD data.

Equinor had made no mention of the dry well in the news section of its website at the time of writing. The development follows a spate of discoveries near the field.

Equinor Finds

Back in March this year, Equinor announced that it had, again, struck oil and gas near the Troll field. Equinor pointed out in a company statement at the time that the find was the company’s eighth discovery in the area since 2019.

In that statement, Equinor noted that the volumes were estimated at between 24 and 84 million barrels of oil equivalent, with slightly more oil than gas. Named Heisenberg, the discovery well was drilled by the Deepsea Stavanger drilling rig.

“Our Troll exploration play keeps delivering,” Geir Sørtveit, Equinor’s Senior Vice President for Exploration and Production West, said in a company statement at the time.

“With discoveries in eight out of nine exploration wells, we are approaching a success rate of 90 percent. We plan to further explore the area, while looking at possible development solutions for the discoveries that have been made,” he added.

“We have a good infrastructure in the area and can quickly bring competitive barrels from here to the market at low cost and with low CO₂ emissions,” the Equinor representative continued.

In February, Equinor revealed that it had made its seventh discovery close to the Troll field since 2019. According to preliminary estimates, the size of the discovery, which was dubbed Røver Sør, is between 17 and 47 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent, Equinor highlighted in a company statement at the time.

“Discoveries close to existing infrastructure are important to maintain oil and gas production from the Norwegian continental shelf,” Sørtveit said in an Equinor statement back in February.

“They need smaller volumes to be profitable and can be put on stream quickly with low carbon emissions. As this discovery is close to the Troll field and other discoveries we have made in the area, we can already now state that it will be commercial,” he added.

Troll Significance

The Troll field represents “the very cornerstone of Norwegian gas production” according to Equinor’s website, which highlights that the asset contains about 40 percent of total gas reserves on the Norwegian continental shelf.

Troll is also one of the largest oil fields on the Norwegian continental shelf, the site states, noting that, in 2002, its oil production totaled more than 400,000 barrels per day.

The field was discovered in 1979, the initial plan for development and operation was approved in 1986., updated in 1990, and production started in 1995, the Norwegianpetroleum site - which is run in cooperation by Norway’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy and the NPD - shows.

About 279 production wells, 605 branches, and more than two million reservoir meters have been drilled on Troll, according to the site, which notes that there is currently one drilling rig on the field, continuously drilling horizontal oil production wells from the subsea templates on Troll Vest.

The field has remaining reserves of 665 million barrels of oil equivalent, the site highlights. Original recoverable reserves at the field were 1.77 billion barrels of oil equivalent, according to the site.

To contact the author, email andreas.exarheas@rigzone.com