Wintershall is continuing its growth course in northern Europe: in the
current licensing round APA 2012 (awards in pre-defined areas), the
Norwegian petroleum and
energy ministry has awarded three new licenses
in the North Sea to the BASF subsidiary. Wintershall will be the
operator for all three licenses. Martin Bachmann, the member of the
Wintershall Board of Executive Directors responsible for exploration and
production, also sees this licensing awarding as confirmation of the
company’s strategy: “We have invested a great deal in expanding our
activities in Norway in the last few years – the result is our own
exploration discoveries as well as the recent asset swap with Statoil,
in which Wintershall has agreed to acquire shares in three producing
fields.”
Wintershall now holds 43 licenses in Norway, 24 of these as operator.
This doesn’t include the new licenses yet, since the official awarding
of the licenses will take place later this year. As such, the oil and
gas company is one of the largest license-holders on the Norwegian
Continental Shelf. "The Norwegian petroleum and energy ministry has
assigned us three interesting licenses. We have set ourselves ambitious
targets for 2013. Our strong license portfolio will hopefully give us
even more exploration success,” says Bernd Schrimpf, Managing Director
of Wintershall Norge AS. At the same time, the company is pushing ahead
with the development projects Maria, Knarr and Edvard Grieg. The
appraisal well Skarfjell North aims to specify more precisely the
original estimates of the resources in the first half of the year. The
Skarfjell discovery from April 2012 is estimated to have between 60 and
160 million barrels of recoverable oil.
New licenses
In addition to the operatorship in area PL 683 in the Norwegian North
Sea, in which Wintershall has a share of 60 percent, the company will
also take over operatorship of licenses PL 678 S (35%) and PL 509 BS
(40%). License PL 509 BS extends the Wintershall-operated license PL 509
S held since 2009.
The Norwegian ministry of petroleum and energy has assigned 51 licenses
in total to 40 companies as part of the 2012 licensing round. Most of
the licenses awarded lie in the Norwegian part of the North Sea (34
licenses). Another 14 permits were issued for the Norwegian Sea and
three for the Barents Sea. Overall, 47 companies took part in the
bidding process, which has now been completed – 23 of them were awarded
operatorships. Hence, more companies took part in the APA 2012 licensing
round than ever before. The overall APA area was expanded to 196,625
square kilometers. This represents an increase in the surface area of
10,325 square kilometers.
New Wintershall licenses APA 2012 in the Norwegian North Sea:
PL 509 BS (40%, operator)
PL 678 (35%, operator)
PL 683 (60%, operator)
About Wintershall
Wintershall Holding GmbH, based in Kassel, Germany, is a wholly-owned
subsidiary of BASF in Ludwigshafen. The company has been active in the
exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas for over 80
years. Wintershall focuses on selected core regions, where the company
has built up a high level of regional and technological expertise. These
are Europe, North Africa, South America, as well as Russia and the
Caspian Sea region. In addition, these operations are complemented by
the company’s growing exploration activities in the Arabian Gulf. Today,
the company employs more than 2,000 staff worldwide from 35 nations and
is now Germany’s largest crude oil and natural gas producer.
source: euro-petrole.com
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