Page 11 - Euroil Week 31 2019

EurOil PROJECTS & COMPANIES EurOil
UK offers exploration rights near Rhum gas field
UK
The gas eld is operated by Serica Energy and a subsidiary of Iran’s national oil company.
THE UK’s Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) is o er- ing fresh acreage in the area surrounding the Rhum gas eld in the northern North Sea.
e licensing agency is seeking investors to develop blocks 3/24c and 3/29c in a restricted “out of round” o ering. Bids will be accepted until October 30 and decisions taken in the fourth quarter.
Rhum is 50% operated by London-based Serica Energy and 50% by a subsidiary of Iran’s national oil company. It entered pro- duction in 2005 but had to shut down five years later because of Western sanctions on Tehran. Gas ows were resumed in late 2014, a er the UK government approved the pro- ject’s restart.
Serica acquired Rhum and the nearby Bruce and Keith fields in 2018 through deals with BP, France’s Total, Australia’s BHP and Japan’s Marubeni and netted 24,000 barrels of oil equiv- alent per day (boepd) of production from its shares in the assets that year. It also has stakes in the producing Erskine and Columbus elds
o the UK shore, as well as several exploration licences.
e company has expressed interest in fur- ther expansion in the North Sea, with its goal of acquiring operated rather than non-operated acreage. It is nancially well-positioned for more takeovers, with output gains at Rhum, Bruce and Keith helping the rm hike pro ts in 2018 to $74.7mn from $17.1mn a year earlier.
e o er of new blocks near Rhum is separate to the UK’s 32nd o shore licensing round, which started in July and which comprises 768 blocks across the country’s continental shelf. e round will be open until November 12, and blocks will be awarded in the second quarter of 2020.
According to the OGA, a substantial amount of data will be made available to help ensure the round’s success.
“ e ground-breaking data packs have been carefully collated to assist industry in their e orts to stimulate exploration and encourage new opportunities within the mature areas of the UKCS,” it said. ™
Capricorn sinks dry well off Norway
Capricorn Norge AS, operator of production licence 842, has completed the drilling of wildcat well 6608/11-9.
e well was drilled about 13 kilometres northeast of the Norne eld and 200 kilometres west of Sandnessjøen.
e primary exploration target for the well was to prove petroleum in Upper Jurassic reservoir rocks (the Rogn formation). e secondary exploration target for the well
was to examine reservoir development in Upper Jurassic reservoir rocks (intra Melke formation sandstones).
e Rogn formation was not present in the primary target. In the secondary target, 118 metres with alternating layers of clay stone, siltstone and sandstone was encountered in the Melke formation, where about 40 metres was sandstone with moderate reservoir quality.
ere are no traces of petroleum in the well. e well is dry.
Data has been collected. is is the rst exploration well in production licence 842. e licence was awarded in APA 2015.
Well 6608/11-9 was drilled to a vertical
NEWS IN BRIEF
depth of 1676 metres below the sea surface, and was terminated in the Not formation in the Middle Jurassic.
Water depth at the site is 378 metres. e well will now be permanently plugged and abandoned.
Well 6608/11-9 was drilled by the Transocean Arctic drilling facility, which will now drill production wells on the Dvalin eld in production licence 435 in the Norwegian Sea, where DEA Norge AS is the operator.
NPD (Norway), August 5 2019
Cuadrilla seeks variation
on planning condition at
Preston New Road
Leading shale gas exploration operator Cuadrilla will seek a minor variation under Section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to one of the conditions of its planning permission at its agship Lancashire fracking site in Preston New Road.
e company, based in Preston, will write to Lancashire County Council within the next month to seek a scoping opinion under Regulation 15 of the Town and Country
Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017.
Chief Executive O cer Francis Egan said: “I would like to share our intention to formally request a variation to one of the conditions of the Preston New Road site planning permission.
“ e condition requires all drilling
and hydraulic fracturing operations to be completed within a period of 30 months from the date of commencement of the drilling
of the rst well. is would in e ect require drilling and hydraulic fracturing to conclude by the end of November 2019. By the end of November 2019 we are in fact likely to have spent no more than 21 months in total drilling or fracturing on site since the commencement of drilling Well PNR1.
“Our proposed variation would seek
to allow additional time for drilling and hydraulic fracturing operations but not to change either the existing approved work scope to drill and hydraulically fracture up to four wells at PNR or the requirement for the site to be decommissioned and restored by April 2023.”
In February, Cuadrilla announced results from ow-testing of the UK’s rst ever horizontal shale gas exploration, which con rmed a high quality natural gas resource
Week 31 08•August•2019
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