Royal Dutch Shell’s Canada subsidiary has come up empty in its first exploration well at a field offshore Nova Scotia.
The supermajor, lead partner with a 50% stake in the project at the deep-water Shelburne Basin, finished exploratory drilling at the well and found it non-commercial.
Shell’s partners in the joint venture are ConocoPhillips Canada East Coast Partnership (30 percent), and Suncor Energy (20 percent) of Calgary, Alberta.
The Cheshire L-97 well, some 250km south of Halifax, had been spudded in October 2015.
It ran into difficulty in March, however, when two kilometres of pipe broke off a wellhead and sank to the ocean floor. That caused drilling at the well to be suspended until June while Canada’s industry regulator conducted a review.
Shell, which is deploying Stena Drilling’s Stena IceMAX drillship, will move on to its second prospective well in the Shelburne Basin.
