Oil and gas company DNO Norge has awarded a drilling contract to a semi-submersible rig managed by Odfjell Drilling for a one well located offshore Norway.

Odfjell Drilling, on behalf of CIMC Raffles, revealed on Tuesday it has agreed to a contract with DNO Norge for the use of the drilling rig Deepsea Yantai.

The rig is managed by Odfjell Drilling and owned by China’s CIMC Raffles.

It will be used by DNO to drill one firm well in production licence (PL) 984. The licence is located in the North Sea offshore Norway and it is operated by DNO holding a 40 per cent interest with Vår Energi and Source Energy each holding a 30 per cent interest.

Odfjell Drilling also said that the scope of work is estimated to take 50 days and will begin in 2Q/3Q 2023.

Recently, the Deepsea Yantai was used by Neptune Energy to drill the Ofelia exploration well (PL 929) in the North Sea, which resulted in a minor oil discovery. This was Neptune’s second North Sea discovery in four months.

In late August, the semi-submersible started drilling a gas prospect located in the Norwegian Sea for Poland’s PGNiG. Drilling operations on the Copernicus exploration well are expected to take up to eight weeks.