Offshore

In November 2008, the Newfoundland and Labrador authorities announced that we had been awarded two licences, one as operator with a 65% interest in the Flemish Pass Basin with Husky as partner, the other with a 50% interest in the Jeanne d'Arc Basin with Petro-Canada as the operator.

The licences were awarded based on a work expenditure bid with no legal obligation to perform the work programme. If no work programme commitment is made during the five first years, 25% of the bid has to be paid. The licences were formally awarded in January 2009.

In 2008, a 3D seismic survey was acquired and processed on the two operated licenses in the southern part of the Jeanne d'Arc Basin near the Terra Nova Field. StatoilHydro holds a 50% interest in both licences.

Drilling operations at the Mizzen exploration well in license EL 1049 in the frontier Flemish Pass basin started at the end of the year, with StatoilHydro as the operator with a 65% interest. The well is expected to be completed in 2009.

In 2009, activities will also include the planned drilling of an exploration well on EL 1092 operated by Petro-Canada. We have a 50% interest in this licence. Evaluation of the existing licenses will aim to identify new drillable prospects.

Oil sands

 We have an interest in 1114 square kilometres (275,213 net acres) of oil sands leases located in the Athabasca region of Alberta. In order to determine the extent of the exploitable oil sands deposits in Alberta, more than four hundred wells were drilled in the region from 2003 to 2008. In addition, 2076 square kilometres of 2D seismic and 210 square kilometres of 3D seismic have been acquired. The oil sands exploration programme has been reduced, and only wells required for delineation, observation and water source or disposal for Corner and Leismer Expansion remain in the 2009 winter drilling programme.

Our oil sand activities are described in more details in section 3.2.6.1.1 Operational review-International E&P-Fields in development and production-North America-Canada.