Six rigs drilling for StatoilHydro offshore Norway are targeting roughly five billion barrels of oil known to be in place, including the deeper layers of the recent Dagny find, where the limit of oil in place “has not been found”.

“We need to find that formation water to bring this into commercial production,” company E&P vice president, Tim Dodson said.

He revealed the company now knows the Dagny oil find is the same reservoir as the 2007 Emmintrude discovery, and at least one hundred metres of oil lie below “500-metre-high” gas structures in place.

The Dagny discovery and the North Sea Frekje find of this week are crucial to StatoilHydro’s efforts to arrest falling oil production. Together with partner ExxonMobil, a Frekje appraisal is planned in an area where “there is considerably more oil than once thought”.

Dodson said the company plans to ramp up production off Norway by 150,000 barrels per day until 2012 while targeting 1.5 million barrels per day of oil equivalents. He said the six rigs are after 10 MMboe, including gas.

“We’re convinced we’re sitting on the most prospective acreage on the Norwegian continental shelf,” Dodson said after showing images of oozing cores cut from 4.9 kilometres below the seabed at Dagny.

Dagny Emmitrude’s 200 MM boe is roughly equivalent to Eni’s arctic Goliat field off northern Norway.

Tags: StatoilHydro