Phillips announces giant discovery

by the Norwegian Petroleum Museum

Phillips announced on 2 June 1970 that a giant oil discovery had been made on the Norwegian continental shelf - an elephant!

— The Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet: "No doubt that we are becoming an oil nation" (02.06.1970) and "Huge amounts of oil in the Ekofisk field" (17.11.1970)

On the basis of the third appraisal well, Britain’s Core Laboratories had concluded that Ekofisk contained 4 200-6 900 billion barrels of oil.

Of this, 15-22 per cent was considered to be commercially recoverable, with a daily oil production from each well of 8 000-10 000 barrels.

Seismic surveys indicated a number of promising geological structures near Ekofisk. Neptune 7 started drilling an exploration well on the West Ekofisk structure in August 1970, while Ocean Viking simultaneously began work in block 2/7 on Eldfisk.

In addition, the Phillips group participated in the Amoco/Noco group’s first wildcat on a structure which lay on the boundary between blocks 2/5 and 2/4 and had been dubbed Tor. Discoveries were eventually made in all these blocks.