Faroe Petroleum and its partners have secured Odjfell Drilling’s Deepsea Bergen semisubmersible rig to drill the Goanna and Fogelberg wells in late 2017 and early 2018.
The Goanna exploration well is expected to spud in Q4 2017 at License PL881, Faroe said in a 20 June statement on its annual general meeting and operational update. The well will target a structural and stratigraphic prospect of Upper Jurassic age sandstones. Goanna is located in the northern North Sea, close to the border with the UK and east of the Statfjord and Snorre fields, and straddles PL881 and PL037, the Statfjord group.
Faroe holds 30% working interest in the well. Wellesley Petroleum is operator with 70% interest. The license was awarded in February as part of the APA16 license round.
Deepsea Bergen will be used in back-to-back drilling at Goanna and then at Fogelberg in late 2017 or early 2018. The PL433 license group is drilling the Fogelberg well to ensure a robust development plan can be proposed with a well justified 2P reserves base and production profile, and before committing to a front-end engineering and design project. In February 2017, the PL433 joint venture was awarded a license extension with a deadline to submit a plan of development and operation by July 2019, Faroe said.
The well will be drilled in a down-dip location with the objective of adding additional 2P reserves, and dependent on the results, drill a side-track on the crest of the structure to conduct a production test on this 2010 discovery.
Centrica is operator of PL433 with 66.7% interest. Faroe said it is increasing its working interest in the license to 33.3%.