Geologists, petroleum companies and politicians are highlighting that the Arctic is an area of high petroleum resource potential. US Geological Survey says nearly a quarter of the world’s undiscovered petroleum resources lie in the Arctic.
But where is it?
Norwegian Petroleum Directorate announced on Friday about yet another dry well. The well was drilled by Statoil 145 kilometres off the coast of Finnmark in the western Barents Sea. The well is in the same area as the Snøhvit gas field.
The well was drilled from the platform Polar Pioneer to a vertical depth of 2887 meters below the sea surface. It has now been permanently plugged and abandoned, according to the Petroleum Directorate.
Polar Pioneer will now proceed to another production license in the Barents Sea.
Read also: Norway announces drilling boom in Barents Sea
In early January, the oil company Eni Norge announced that they had drilled a dry well just west of the Goliat field, also in the western part of the Barents Sea.
In December 2010, Shell said its exploration drilling at the Dalsnuten prospect in the Norwegian Sea proved unsuccessful.
BarentsObserver reported last autumn that there are large uncertainties about petroleum resources in the delimitation line area in the Barents Sea. Professor Jan Inge Faleide with the Insitute of Geology at the Univeristy of Oslo said there were good oil and gas fields in the southwestern Barents Sea, but that was five to ten million years ago.
– Much of the petroleum resources that might have been there is now gone, Faleide said.
