Lundin Petroleum Finds More Alta Arctic Oil
Lundin Petroleum finds more oil at site; firm will drill more wells next year.
Sweden's Lundin Petroleum has found oil at two appraisal wells at its Alta discovery in the Arctic, a find that could open up a new area of oil production off northern Norway.
The Alta find raised hopes when it was discovered in 2014 that more oil could be found in a region where only a handful of oilfields have been discovered after several decades, and none have started production.
The firm did not revise its resource estimate for the find, originally seen at 125 million to 400 million barrels of oil equivalent, but said it will drill more on the site next year.
"We see an upside potential of 1.5-2.5 (Swedish crowns) per share if the future appraisal well confirms the upper end of the current resource range for Alta," analyst Teodor Sveen Nilsen of Swedbank wrote in a note to clients.
Alta is near another oil find by Lundin Petroleum called Gohta. Together they could contain close to half a billion barrels of oil equivalent, increasing the odds for development and production once oil prices rise from their current slump.
Lundin has a stake of 40 percent in Alta. Partners Idemitsu of Japan and DEA Norway each have 30 percent.
Shares in Lundin were up 0.8 percent at 0716 GMT, roughly in step with a European oil and gas companies index up 1.0 percent.
Reporting by Gwladys Fouche
