OREANDA-NEWS. OMV, the integrated international oil and gas company has found oil in the Barents Sea. The exploration success has been made in the exploration licenses PL 537 which was signed in 2009. Jaap Huijskes, OMV Executive Board Member responsible for Exploration and Production: “We are very pleased with this exploration success. This discovery with exciting follow-up potential will significantly contribute to OMV’s long term organic growth in Northern Europe. It is another important step after the recently announced transaction with Statoil which includes interests in the fields Gullfaks and Gudrun.”

OMV (Norge) AS, operator of exploration license PL 537, is about to complete drilling operations on wildcat well 7324/8-1, Wisting Central. The presence of oil was proven through wireline logging, wireline testing and coring. The well was drilled to a vertical depth of 905 meters below sea level; water depth at the site is 373 meters. The well will be permanently plugged and abandoned.

The objective of the well was to confirm the exploration concept and to prove hydrocarbons in middle to lower Jurassic reservoir rocks of the Upper Realgrunnen Subgroup on the Hoop High area, which so far has not seen any exploration drilling. The well results are a breakthrough for the regional exploration activities as the presence of good quality oil shows the possible large potential of an area, which will see more exploration drilling in the near future. OMV has as a joint venture partner interests in three additional licenses in the Hoop High area. Further exploration drilling in one of the other licenses is expected for 2014.

Preliminary estimates place the size of the discovery for the drilled segment between 60 and
 160 mn bbl of recoverable oil, and 10 to 40 bn cf of recoverable gas. Considering equivalent segments, immediately adjacent to the first one, recoverable oil volumes for the total of PL 537 are seen in a size order of 200 to 500 mn boe. Further drilling is needed to confirm the full license potential; a second well – Wisting Main – pursuing a different, deeper target will be spud immediately after Wisting Central and is expected to contribute valuable information.

OMV (Norge) AS as operator has a 25% share in the exploration license; our joint venture partners are Petoro, Idemitsu,Tullow (each 20%) and Statoil (15%).