DNO has confirmed that a fresh appraisal well at the Carmen gas-condensate discovery in Norwegian North Sea license PL1148 places recoverable resources between 21 and 107 million barrels of oil equivalent. Carmen was first found in 2023.
The appraisal well found most of the recoverable volume sitting in the Etive Formation, where reservoir quality runs from moderate to poor. That constraint has the four-company partnership evaluating hydraulic fracturing as a tool to lift recovery from a deposit that holds considerable in-place volumes despite the quality limitations. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves pumping fluid at high pressure into a rock formation to create fractures that let hydrocarbons flow more freely to the wellbore.
Partnership and development path
The license is held by Wellesley Petroleum (30%, operator), DNO (30%), Equinor (30%) and Aker (10%). The group is considering further appraisal wells and additional exploration targets in the northern part of the Carmen structure, which the source describes as laterally extensive.
The partnership is also studying Carmen as a tie-back candidate to the Kvitebjorn platform, located 35 km to the west. DNO holds a 19% stake in Kvitebjorn, giving it a direct commercial interest in routing Carmen volumes through that hub. Tie-back developments use an existing offshore platform or subsea system to process and export output from a new discovery, avoiding the cost of a standalone installation.
This appraisal follows a sequence of upstream activity at Carmen covered previously, including Wellesley's initial confirmation of the discovery and the original proof-of-concept well that established Carmen as a gas-condensate find near the Troll area.
