Statoil Wildcat Well Fails to Strike Arctic Oil

摘要

To its disappointment, Statoil has discovered gas -- not oil -- at a wildcat well in the Norwegian sector of the Barents Sea to the far north of Norway, the company announced Friday. Statoil had been hoping to strike oil to firm up its estimate of the Skrugard discovery -- part of its $16 billion Arctic exploration campaign. Although it is considered to be noncommercial, the discovery in the frontier Arctic acreage marks another step in Norway's attempts to utilize an estimated 32 trillion cubic feet (0.91 Tcm) of gas, after the Scandinavian country opened up new areas of the Barents Sea to petroleum activity in April this year, the first time it had done so since 1994 (IOD Apr.24'13).