IOG welcomes ‘key milestone’ after drilling gets underway on North Sea field

IOG welcomes ‘key milestone’ after drilling gets underway on North Sea field

Independent Oil and Gas (IOG) is welcoming a “key milestone” after drilling got underway on its “Core” project North Sea fields.

Noble's Hans Deul jack-up rig mobilised from the Cromarty Firth on April 1 and reached the Elgood field location on April 4.

IOG has now confirmed that the Elgood development well, 48/22c-H1, was spudded at 17:30 on April 9.

Elgood is the first of five planned development wells in IOG's Phase 1 project and is expected to take approximately three months to drill and finish.

After completion, the rig will move on to the Blythe field in early Q3.

Last year, Petrofac was awarded a five-well contract for the first phase of the “Core” project, which is a development made up of six fields in the Southern North Sea containing around 410 billion cubic feet of gas, which will be transported onshore via the Thames pipeline.

Andrew Hockey, CEO of IOG, commented: “We are very pleased to have kicked off the Phase 1 drilling campaign, another key milestone for the Company as we continue to progress towards commercialisation of our Core Project.

“This drilling campaign has been planned meticulously by the IOG drilling, subsurface, subsea and HSE teams since early last year, in collaboration with our