Oil exploration and production company Rex International Holding 5WH has made a minor discovery in the PL867 Gjegnalunden well, which its subsidiary Lime Petroleum AS (LPA) has 20% interest in.
The operator Aker BP — which holds the remaining interests in the licence — is concluding operations and permanently plugging the well, which is customary for exploration wells in Norway.
The well is about 12 kilometres north of the Ivar Aasen field in the Norwegian North Sea, 187 kilometres southwest of the city of Haugesund.
The dual objective of the Gjegnalunden well was mainly to prove hydrocarbons in Middle Jurassic reservoir rocks of the Hugin and Sleipner formations as well as to prove hydrocarbons in reservoir rocks in the deeper Triassic Skagerrak Formation.
The well encountered a thin oil column of approximately 3 metres in the Hugin Formation, in moderate quality reservoir sandstone.
An oil-water contact was proven at 3,654 metres True Vertical Depth Sub Sea. In addition, there were indications of hydrocarbons both above and below this column, in the Hugin and Sleipner formations respectively.
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The well was drilled to a vertical depth of 4,057m below sea level.
Preliminary volume calculations made by the operator indicate between 500,000 to 1.4 million cubic metre of recoverable oil equivalents. LPA’s initial volume calculations suggest potential for a larger accumulation.
“We would have liked to see a thicker hydrocarbon column in the Gjegnalunden well, but we are encouraged by the findings in the well,” says LPA CEO Lars Hübert.
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“We will continue to work with the well results to identify further resources in PL867, and to also evaluate these results against the prospectivity in the neighbouring PL818 licence with the Orkja prospect, in which LPA has a 30% share,” he adds.
Shares in Rex closed at an unchanged 21.5 cents on Feb 10.
