OREANDA-NEWS. Operator Statoil has together with PL602 partners made a gas discovery in the Roald Rygg prospect in the Norwegian Sea. This is the second discovery made by Statoil in the Aasta Hansteen area spring 2015.

“Statoil has completed a targeted two well exploration programme around Aasta Hansteen which aimed to test additional potential in the area and make the Aasta Hansteen project more robust. Both wells, Snefrid Nord and Roald Rygg, have resulted in interesting discoveries, which will now be further evaluated for future tie-in to the Aasta Hansteen infrastructure,” says Irene Rummelhoff, senior vice president exploration Norway in Statoil.

The well 6706/12-3, drilled by the Transocean Spitsbergen rig in the Roald Rygg prospect, proved a 38-metre gas column in the Nise Formation with very good reservoir quality. Statoil estimates the volumes in Roald Rygg to be in the range of 12-44 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent (o.e.).

Roald Rygg is located less than 7 kilometres west of the Snefrid Nord discovery. The estimated total volumes in the two discoveries correspond to about 25% of the Aasta Hansteen recoverable volumes.

Aasta Hansteen will be the largest SPAR platform in the world and is the biggest ongoing field development project in the Norwegian Sea. It is one of the main projects in Statoil’s portfolio. The plan for development and operations (PDO) was approved by the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy in 2013. Production start-up is expected in 2017.

Exploration well 6706/12-3 is situated in PL602 in the Norwegian Sea. Earlier this year, Statoil increased its equity share in PL602 through transactions with Rocksource ASA and Atlantic Petroleum Norge AS.

Subject to government approval, the PL602 partnership will consist of Statoil Petroleum AS (operator, 42.5%), Petoro AS (20%), Centrica Resources (Norge) AS (20%), Wintershall Norge AS (10%) and Atlantic Petroleum Norge AS (7.5%).