VNG comes up dry in offshore Norway

The Norwegian subsidiary of German gas group VNG’s latest exploration well on the Blink prospect in the Norwegian Sea has not encountered any hydrocarbons, project partner Faroe Petroleum announced on Tuesday. The result marks the end of a string of successful discoveries made by VNG Norge between 2014 and 2015.

The 6406/12-5S well was drilled to a depth of 3,710 metres at the Halten Terrace using the semi-submersible Transocean Arctic leased from Switzerland’s Transocean. The Blink well was a follow up to the 6406/12-4S Boomerang prospect drilled earlier in 2015 by the same rig and located 4 kilometres away, which uncovered 13 million-31 million barrels of oil equivalent.

Both Blink and Boomerang were part of a two-well campaign targeting the same Jurassic Melke formation struck by the nearby Pil and Bue discoveries in 2014, which have combined resources of around 193 million barrels of oil equivalent.

The dry Blink well will force VNG to reconsider its options of a standalone development for the Pil, Bue and Boomerang discoveries or a subsea tieback to the majority government-owned Statoil’s Njord platform, which is located around 27 kilometres northeast.

The wells lie within PL 586, in which VNG has a 30-percent operating interest together with Norway-focused UK independents Faroe Petroleum (25 percent) and Spike Exploration (30 percent), as well as Norwegian operator Pure E&P Norway (15 percent), formerly named Rocksource.

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