Norway Central Graben exploration basin

The Norwegian Central Graben is a mature basin situated in the Central North Sea. The basin is bounded by the Northern North Sea Basin to the north, the UK maritime boundary to the west and the Danish border to the south. Much of the exploration in the basin to date has focussed on the Cretaceous-Tertiary and Jurassic plays. However, the King Lear (2012) and Julius (2015) discoveries have brought increased attention to the Norwegian sector of the Mesozoic HP/HT play, which has been more widely explored in the UK portion of the basin. We forecast exploration activity will continue to focus on Upper Jurassic oil and more deeply buried HP/HT gas/condensate prospects. Creating value from exploration in the Mesozoic HP/HT play will be challenging and limited to the best performing companies. The outlook for exploration in the Jurassic play is more forgiving, however the average discovery size is modelled to by only 15 mmboe and may lack the materiality some explorers are looking for.