Wintershall Holding AG, Germany’s largest producer of crude oil and natural gas and an internationally active company, is step-ping up its activities in the Norwegian North Sea. After announcing the Grosbeak discovery in production license 378 in July, Wintershall is now set to secure a further stake in this promising discovery.

This is part of an agreement between Wintershall Norge ASA and Spring Energy AS which was signed this week and whereby Wintershall Norge will acquire a 5% working interest in PL 378 from Spring Energy. Following Authority approval of the transaction Wintershall will own a 45% working interest in this operated license. At the same time, Spring will acquire a 2.5% interest in the Brage field from Wintershall Norge. Spring will also farm into five exploration licenses with working interests ranging from 10% to 15%. Wintershall is planning well activities for two of these licenses in 2010.

Harald Vabø, General Manager of Wintershall Norge, explained, “This transaction is part of the process to highgrade our portfolio, which, following the integration of Revus and Wintershall, is one of the largest exploration portfolios in Norway. At the same time, Wintershall strengthens its equity position in our operated Grosbeak license, where we also see exciting further potential. This discovery is the first Wintershall operated discovery in Norway, and it is our intention to move this forward ag-gressively towards development, parallel to testing out the further potential in the license.”

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