Norwegian oil giant Equinor has been cleared to drill an exploration well at the Isflak prospect in the Barents Sea.
The well 7220/7-4 sits in the production license 532, in a water depth of 351 meters. The approval was granted by the safety regulator PSA Norway.
Equinor will use the semi-submersible drilling rig Transocean Enabler to drill at the Isflak prospect. The drilling operation is expected to take 30 days to complete.
The License 532 is where Equinor's Johan Castberg development is being worked on. The Isflak well is located about 8.5 km south of the location where the Johan Castberg FPSO will be deployed.
The Johan Castberg field development project’s resource base consists of the three oil discoveries Skrugard, Havis and Drivis, located in PL 532. The field is expected to come on stream in 2023 and will produce for 30 years.
The objective of the Isflak well drilling is to discover additional hydrocarbons that could be fed into the FPSO. The drilling location is 203 km from the Finnmark coast and 218 km from Bjørnøya.
Equinor is the operator of license 532 with a 50 percent stake. Partners are Var Energi with 30 percent and Petoro with 20 percent ownership.
The company in July this year drilled a wildcat well in the license, about 25 kilometers south of the Johan Castberg field, hoping to prove petroleum in reservoir rocks in the Upper Triassic to Lower Jurassic (the Tubåen Formation). The well 7219/9-3, the tenth exploration well in production license 532, was classified as dry.
This well, too, was drilled using the Transocean Enabler rig, which then proceeded to drill production wells for the development of the Johan Castberg field.
