Out of 17 discoveries made on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) last year, a minimum of ten of them will be presented at the conference NCS Exploration – Recent Discoveries in Oslo, Norway, on May 12-13.
Roughly 600 MMboe were discovered on the NCS in 2019, and 2019 is the best year for value creation in the last eight years, i.e., since the discovery of Johan Sverdrup.
In particular, the programme committee is proud to announce that the three biggest – Liatårnet (Aker BP, North Sea), Ørn (Equinor, Norwegian Sea) and Echino South (Equinor, North Sea) – will be presented.
Last year’s discoveries on the NCS prove that small, but high-value discoveries are becoming increasingly more important. The explanation for this is that NCS exploration has reached a stage where large, giant discoveries are less likely, although obviously sought after.
The industry therefore now seems to recognize the high-value discoveries, i.e. smaller discoveries near existing fields that can rapidly be put into production at low cost.
The success rate for drilling these prospects is also generally high, around 60% for drilling in old numbered licences vs. APA licences and frontier exploration with around 20%.
These high-value discoveries are in contrast to larger sized volume discoveries, that will be less frequent and where production would be further out in time.
Text: HALFDAN CARSTENS
