35/9-5

General

The Brand well 35/9-5 was drilled ca 5 km west of the Gjøa Field on the Måløy slope in the northern North Sea. The main objective of the well was to evaluate the hydrocarbon potential of the Middle Cretaceous Agat Formation sandstone. The Agat trend had been tested by wells drilled north of Brand. The 35/9-3 well is an oil and gas discovery located 17 km to the northeast, whereas 35/3-3 and 35/3-4 known as Agat discoveries, encountered gas in coeval sands 58 km north. The Grosso well 35/6-2 S located to the north of the Brand well location also located good quality Agat sands. Based on these offsets, sandstones were expected of reasonably good quality with average porosities ranging from 18 to 22% and permeabilities of 1 to 200 mD.

Operations and results

Wildcat well 35/9-5 was spudded with the semi-submersible installation West Alpha on 1 January 2010 and drilled to TD at 3531 m in the Middle Jurassic Krossfjord Formation. No significant problem was encountered in the operations. The well was drilled with seawater and bentonite sweeps down to 470 m and with Glydril mud from 470 m to TD.

The well penetrated rocks of Quaternary, Tertiary, Cretaceous, and Jurassic age. There was very little sand preserved in the Agat Formation at the 35/9-5 location. The formation is described as a sandy limestone to calcareous sand with approximately 4.1 m of net reservoir with average 18% porosity and 77% Sw. There was a 0.6 m interval that calculated as ?pay?, with a 55% Sw, but there were no shows to confirm hydrocarbons in the Agat Formation or in any other part of the well.

No cores were cut. An MDT tool was run over the Middle Jurassic Krossfjord sandstone. Four stations were sampled, al