OMV comes up dry at Barents wildcat

Vienna-headquartered OMV has gotten disappointing results from its most recent wildcat drilling in the Barents Sea, with the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate classifying well 7324/8-2 as dry on Friday.

The well was located at the Bjaaaland prospect, 6 kilometres southeast of OMV’s Wisting discovery and 310 kilometres north of Hammerfest. It was drilled to a vertical depth of 815 metres at a water depth of 394 metres.

OMV had been hoping to prove petroleum in Middle Jurassic and Late Triassic reservoir rocks, as well as in Middle-to-Late Triassic rocks. The operator did find medium and good quality reservoir rocks, but after data acquisition and sampling the well was nonetheless declared dry.

The well was drilled by the Leiv Eiriksson semi-submersible rig, owned and operated by Greece’s Ocean Rig. It was the fourth to be drilled in production licence 537.

OMV’s Norwegian subsidiary is the operator at licence 537 with a 25-percent stake, while Idemitsu Petroleum Norge, the Norwegian subsidiary of the Japanese company, Norway’s state-owned Petoro and the local subsidiary of UK-headquartered Tullow Oil control 20 percent and Norway’s Statoil owns 15 percent.