Statoil gets consent for more NCS work

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OSLO, Norway, July 12 (UPI) -- The Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority gave consent to Statoil to use a mobile drilling rig for two wells in the Johan Sverdrup discovery in the North Sea.

The agency said it granted consent for the drilling of two wells -- 16/2-12 and 16/2-14 -- in the North Sea. The water depth at the site was listed at 377 feet.

Operations at 16/2-12 should last an estimated 39 days while 16/2-14 should last 55 days, the agency said.

Statoil in February said more rig capacity would help it get more resources extracted from the Norwegian continental shelf.

Statoil trumpeted its success at the NCS in January. The company said it expected to maintain a production capacity from the NCS of around 600,000 barrels of oil per day for the rest of the decade.

Statoil last year announced one of the largest oil finds on the Norwegian continental shelf at the Sverdrup field. The company estimated there were 900 million-1.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil equivalent there, twice the previous estimate.

The announcement follows government intervention into a labor strike staged by offshore oil workers over pensions. The strike put a halt to roughly 15 percent of the country's total oil production and 7 percent of its natural gas output.