OMV makes drilling breakthrough in Barents Sea

VIENNA, April 6 (UPI) -- Austrian energy company OMV said it made a breakthrough for the industry with a novel drilling method in the northernmost oil field offshore Norway.

Operating in the Wisting field in the Barents Sea, the northernmost oil discovery in Norwegian territory, the company said it completed the test of a shallow-reservoir drilling method.

"The well started vertically and was successfully steered into a horizontal orientation within an 820-foot depth interval," the company explained.

A paper from the U.S. Energy Information Administration written more than 10 years before the U.S. oil boom found horizontal drilling exposed "significantly" more reserves to drillers than conventional vertical wells. Production rates using horizontal wells were at the time up to seven times greater than vertical wells. An offset, however, is higher drilling costs.

OMV said the test was needed to see if drilling into untapped areas of the Wisting discovery is warranted. A flow rate of about 5,000 barrels of oil equivalent was established during the test.

The company was awarded the rights to drill into parts of the Wisting reserve area in 2009. In 2013, the company announced an official discovery and estimated the preliminary size of the find at between 60 million and 160 million barrels of recoverable oil and between 10 billion and 40 billion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas.

"OMV is very satisfied with the well test results, which are promising," Johan Pleininger, a board member in charge of exploration and production, said in a statement. "This well is an important milestone towards a future field development on Wisting."

OMV is the operator for the region with a 25 percent stake. Its joint venture partners include Norwegian companies like Statoil and regional players like Tullow Oil.