• Location: Scandic Oslo Airport / Gardermoen
• Date: June 08-09 2022

Alyson Harding, Westwood Global Energy Group will give the opening keynote at NDS Exploration on "A Decade of Exploration in Norway and the UK"

She is followed by Jonny Hesthammer, CEO at M Vest Energy AS who will talk about why we will still need explorationists going forward.

This year’s conference will not only address the outcomes and learnings of wells drilled on the NCS recently, there will also be talks from operators outside the NCS to help knowledge transfer from across the basin.

Key Themes

The North Sea - Part I (Day 1)
The North Sea experienced a high level of drilling activity on the NCS in the past couple of years. This has resulted in the discovery of a number of high-value accumulations such as Røver Nord, Dugong and very recently Hamlet. This session – which is spread out over the two days of the conference - will provide a good insight into the what the area is still able to deliver and how recent finds will be developed.

Source Rocks: There has been a debate recently centred around the question when source rocks expel hydrocarbons. Former senior advisor from Equinor Per Arne Bjørkum proposes to revive old concepts stemming from times before offshore drilling took off, suggesting that oil migrates early and matures in reservoirs. On the other hand, current models assume “late” generation when source rocks are buried much deeper, as will be illustrated by Eric Michael from APT. In this session, the two viewpoints will first be presented and subsequently discussed.

Barents Sea
Although recent exploration efforts in the Barents Sea have not been hugely successful, some interesting wells have surely been drilled. Also, the area will be seeing a major development in the years to come, with the shallow Wisting oil discovery being worked up to first oil. In this session, we take a look back at how Wisting was discovered, which wasn’t a straightforward process at all. In addition, we’ll hear about exploration around Johan Castberg, Goliat and in the western Barents Sea.

The North Sea - Part II (Day 2)
In the second part of this session, some interesting well results will be discussed. Hear about Mugnetind and the attempt to prove commercial volumes in the Ula Fm, the Paleocene in Chalk heartlands (Gomez) and Eocene injectites (Lyderhorn). In addition, TotalEnergies will shed the latest insights on their HPHT Culzean field in the UK sector through sharing the learnings from the first phase of production.

Frontier Exploration - Subsurface & Prospects
Given recent geopolitical developments, energy security is high on Europe’s agenda. With near-field exploration dominating in Norway, a new look at more frontier exploration is required from a perspective of energy supply. This session will host three talks, shining light on different aspects of frontier exploration across the NCS.Hans Martin Veding from the NPD will illustrate the process of how the organisation arrives at estimates of yet-to-find resources in the more frontier parts of the NCS, followed by a talk delivered by Bent Kjølhamar and Reidun Myklebust from TGS during which the prospectivity in the deeper areas of the Norwegian Sea will be highlighted. Finally, Henk Kombrink from GeoPublishing will summarise the latest attempts to tap into new resources with recent frontier wells drilled across the NCS.

Norwegian Sea
The Norwegian Sea can be seen as a mature area when it comes to exploration opportunities, but at the same time there is still a high level of activity as well as near-field and standalone opportunities. Tyrihans Ille North is a good example of drilling into untapped reserves very close to existing fields, where the Bergknapp appraisal campaign by Wintershall Dea is an example of better understanding the architecture of an initial discovery. Finally, it will be interesting to hear about the Fenja field and the consequences of the 2020 appraisal campaign on the way Neptune progresses the field to development.

Status - NCS Development Activity
During the last talk of the conference, Anders Wittemann from Wittemann E&P Consulting will address the current status of Plans for Development and Operation (PDO) on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, allowing a quick overview of what is currently in store when it comes to new volumes coming on stream in the years to come.

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