The Norwegian Offshore Directorate has announced that Equinor Energy and its partner Aker BP have made a new oil discovery in exploration well 30/12-3 S located in production licence 272 B in the North Sea.

Drilled approximately 40km south of Oseberg and 150km west of Bergen, the 30/12-3 S well encountered oil. A sidetrack well, 30/12-3 A, was found to be dry.

The Deepsea Stavanger drilling rig, owned by Odfjell Drilling, conducted the operations on behalf of Aker BP, which serves as the operator of production licence 272 B.

The oil discovery in well 30/12-3 S is estimated to contain between 0.15 and 0.55 million standard cubic metres of recoverable oil equivalent.

However, the preliminary calculations suggest that the discovery does not meet profitability thresholds with the current oil price assumptions.

The primary goal of the wildcat wells, 30/12-3 S and 30/12-3 A, was to confirm the presence of petroleum in Middle Jurassic reservoir rocks within the Tarbert Formation.

The successful well, 30/12-3 S, encountered a 3.5m oil column in this formation, with the sandstone reservoir displaying moderate to good quality. The oil/water contact was identified at 3,110m below sea level.

The Ness Formation, which was 163m thick in total, had 19m of sandstone reservoir with moderate reservoir quality.

This discovery marks the first well drilled within the licence, which is shared equally between Aker BP and Equinor, each holding a 50% interest.

Awarded during the APA 2018 round, the licence encompasses the Munin field, discovered in 2011 and approved for development by authorities in June 2023.

Recently, Norway awarded 62 exploration licences to 24 oil companies as part of its APA 23 round.

The 62 production licences granted in APA 2023 include 29 in the North Sea, 25 in the Norwegian Sea and eight in the Barents Sea.