Norwegian state-controlled energy company Statoil will start drilling for oil off the North Atlantic Faroe Islands this week in the first test well on the Faroe shelf.
The work will be begun in the middle of the week by the drilling rig Sovereign Explorer, the Faroe Islands Ministry of Petroleum said in a statement received by
Reuters
today.
Sovereign Explorer was due to reach Faroese waters at the weekend and the positioning and anchor handling at the well site were expected to take four days.
The well on the so-called Longan prospect is located to the southeast of the Faroe Islands close to the British boundary. The work is scheduled to take two to three months.
In the first licensing round on the Faroe shelf, which was launched in February last year, the Faroese Ministry of Petroleum received 22 licence applications from 17 oil companies.
In August 2000, the ministry awarded seven offshore exploration licences to 12 oil companies.
In addition to Statoil, BP and the Faroese Partnership, with US Amerada Hess as operator, are also to drill off the Faroe Islands this summer.
The Faroe Islands, an 18-island archipelago between Scotland and Iceland with 45,000 people, earns more than 90 percent of its income from fishing and has semi-autonomous status under the Kingdom of Denmark.