The Petroleum Safety Authority of Norway has given clearance to Statoil to carry out drilling in an exploration well in block 7219 in the Barents Sea.
Statoil, the Norwegian multinational oil and gas giant, is the operator for production licence 532. The exploration well 7219/9-2 is located in the Kayak prospect.
Water depth at the drilling site is 336m and it can be found 198km of Sørøya in Finnmark in the north-west direction and about 140km from Goliat in the north-west direction.
Statoil has scheduled the drilling this month and will undertake it for duration of 27 days.
The 7219/9-2 exploration well in the production licence 532 will be drilled with the mobile drilling facility owned and operated by Songa Offshore, known as the Songa Enabler.
A semi-submersible facility of the CAT D type, Songa Enabler was built in 2016 in South Korea at the Daewoo yard and has been registered in Norway with the DNV GL classification.
A letter written by Petroleum Safety Authority to Statoil regarding its consent read: “The processing of the application for consent is coordinated by us, see guidance to section 26 of the Management Regulations. In line with this, the application has been submitted to the Environmental Directorate and the County Governor of Rogaland.
“The Environmental Directorate has stated that they do not have comments regarding consent being granted. The Directorate's decision is also accompanied by a separate letter.”
The authority also wrote that county governor in Rogaland did not find any issues on the consent it had given to Statoil.
In 2012, Statoil made a significant oil discovery in the Barents Sea through the Skrugard and Havis discoveries in production licence 532 which it estimated to have 400-600 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalents.
Image: One of the exploration operations of Statoil in Barents Sea. Photo: courtesy of Kenneth Engelsvold/ Statoil ASA.