Lundin Spuds Jorvik Exploration Well

Lundin Petroleum announced Monday that it has spud an exploration well targeting its Jorvik prospect in the Norwegian North Sea. Well 16/1-17, on production license 338, is located east of the Edvard Grieg field.

The main objective of well 16/1-17 is to prove the presence of oil-bearing sandstones and conglomerates in a basin directly east of Edvard Grieg. Lundin estimates that the Jorvik prospect contains un-risked, gross prospective resources of 46 million barrels of oil equivalent. Lundin, as operatorm, holds a 50-percent working interest in PL 338 while Wintershall Norge and OMV hold 30 percent and 20 percent respectively.

On a day that the Swedish company made a number of announcements, Lundin also revealed that it is to test appraisal well 16/3-5 on production license 501 in the southeastern part of the Johan Sverdrup discovery after it reached its target depth.

Lundin said the appraisal well has drilled through reservoir sections consisting mainly of good quality Volgian reservoir sand and Zechstein carbonates. The top of the Volgian reservoir sandstone was found at 6,210 feet below mean sea level. The total gross reservoir column is approximately 98 feet, of which 46 feet is gross Volgian reservoir.

The oil-bearing Zechstein limestone is in pressure communication with the overlying sand and provides potential upside resources, according to Lundin. Oil has been sampled in both reservoir zones and the well will now drill stem test the two zones.

The well is being drilled by the Bredford Dolphin (mid-water semisub) rig and the testing will take approximately 20 days.

Meanwhile, Lundin added that it will not provide further updates on contingent resources at the Johan Sverdrup discovery since the working operator for the field, Statoil, has indicated that it plans to release details of updated resources later in the year, once conceptual development studies are completed.

"We feel it is appropriate that the working operator of Johan Sverdrup provide updated resource numbers. As the operator of PL501 we continue with our appraisal drilling program which provides new information for both development planning and recoverable resources," Lundin CEO Ashley Heppenstall commented in a company statement.

"The results of the appraisal drilling to date taken as a whole lead us to the view that the current most likely mid case Johan Sverdrup resources located in PL501 will be within the lower half of the previously guided 800-to-1800 million barrel of oil equivalent range. We also believe that the resource calculation range remains wide."

A former engineer, Jon is an award-winning editor who has covered the technology, engineering and energy sectors since the mid-1990s. Email Jon at jmainwaring@rigzone.com.

Generated by readers, the comments included herein do not reflect the views and opinions of Rigzone. All comments are subject to editorial review. Off-topic, inappropriate or insulting comments will be removed.
For More Information on the Offshore Rig Fleet:
RigLogix can provide the information that you need about the offshore rig fleet, whether you need utilization and industry trends or detailed reports on future rig contracts. Subscribing to RigLogix will allow you to access dozens of prebuilt reports and build your own custom reports using hundreds of available data columns. For more information about a RigLogix subscription, visit http://www.riglogix.com/.

View the original article here