Equinor plans to rapidly develop its latest discovery at Omega South in the North Sea as a subsea tieback.
The operator said in a 2 March press release that the new find could be quickly connected to subsea facilities for processing at the Snorre A platform, an approach that it believes will pave the way for future developments on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS).
The Deepsea Atlantic drilled exploration well 34/4-19 S in production license (PL) 057 at a water depth of 381 m. The discovery was made in the Omega South Alpha prospect, approximately 1.6 km east of the Snorre field and about 5 km from existing subsea facilities.
Equinor’s preliminary recoverable volume estimate for the Omega South find is between 25 million BOE and 89 million BOE.
“The new discovery will be tied back quickly to existing subsea facilities and produced through the Snorre A platform,” Erik Gustav Kirkemo, Equinor’s senior vice president for the Southern Area in Exploration and Production Norway, said in the news release. “Near-field exploration is important for extending the lifetime of fields already in operation. Since most of the infrastructure has already been paid off, these are competitive barrels.”
Planning Ahead
Equinor called Omega South a pilot for what it sees as a new, faster, and more cost-efficient approach to developing subsea fields.
Trond Bokn, Equinor’s senior vice president for project development, said in the release that the operator is now “planning the field development prior to discovery. This makes it possible to bring new discoveries into production in just 2 to 3 years.”
Bokn said the exploration well was drilled through a foundation that the partnership plans to reuse, along with portions of the exploration well itself. He added that such reuse will reduce costs and enable faster startup.
According to the Norwegian Offshore Directorate, Equinor’s objective was to prove petroleum in Middle Jurassic reservoir rocks in the Brent Group. Well 34/4-19 encountered oil in sandstone layers with a total thickness of 224.5 m, 127 m of which were sandstone layers with moderate to good reservoir properties. Oil/water contact was not encountered. The well was not formation-tested, but extensive data acquisition and sampling were carried out.
Well 34/4-19 was drilled to respective vertical and measured depths of 3,872 m and 4,090 m below sea level and was terminated in the Drake Formation in the Middle Jurassic. The well will be temporarily plugged and abandoned.
Equinor operates the license with 31% interest on behalf of partners Petoro with 30%, Harbour Energy Norge with 24.5%, Inpex Idemitsu Norge with 9.6%, and Vår Energi with 4.9%.
