Oil and gas company Wellesley Petroleum has received regulatory approval from Norwegian Petroleum Directorate to drill an exploration well in the North Sea, off Norway.
The well, formally named well 36/1-4 S, will be drilled using Dolphin Drilling's Borgland Dolphin semi-submersible drilling rig.
According to NPD, the well site is located in production license 885. The well will be drilled about 65 kilometers north of the Gjøa field.
Production licence 885 was awarded in February 2017, and this is the second exploration well to be drilled in this license. The first well 36/1-3 was drilled in early 2019 and came up dry.
NPD did not say when the drilling of the second well would start, but it did say that its drilling permit was contingent on the other permits and consents required by other authorities being secured before drilling activity starts.
As for the drilling rig, Borgland Dolphin was recently used by another operator in Norway, DNO, to drill the Gomez prospect in the North Sea. The drilling operation, conducted 14 kilometers east of the Ekofisk field, produced a minor oil discovery. DNO said at the time that there was uncertainty whether the reservoir can be commercially produced and with no estimate of recoverable volumes established at the time.
Following the completion of the Gomez well, the Borgland Dolphin was scheduled to move to drill wildcat well 6306/3-1 S in production licence 937 in the southern part of the Norwegian Sea, where INEOS E&P Norge AS is the operator.
Also, Wellesley plans to use the rig in Q1 2022, to drill an HPHT well on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.