The well is located about 12km west of Statoil’s Aasta Hansteen field, which is under development.
Drilled by the Transocean Spitsbergen rig in the Roald Rygg prospect, the well 6706/12-3 encountered a 38m gas column in the Nise Formation with very good reservoir quality.
The company estimates the preliminary size of the discovery to be between 2-7 billion standard cubic metres (Sm³) of recoverable gas.
Extensive data acquisition and sampling have been carried out at the well, which was not formation-tested.
Located in PL602 in the Norwegian Sea, the well objective was to verify petroleum in Upper Cretaceous reservoir rocks, with a primary exploration target in the Nise formation and a secondary exploration target in the Kvitnos formation.
Statoil Norway senior vice president exploration Irene Rummelhoff said: "Statoil has completed a targeted two-well exploration programme around Aasta Hansteen which aimed to test additional potential in the area and make the Aasta Hansteen project more robust.
"Both wells, Snefrid Nord and Roald Rygg, have resulted in interesting discoveries, which will now be further evaluated for future tie-in to the Aasta Hansteen infrastructure."
Located less than 7km west of the Snefrid Nord discovery, the Roald Rygg prospect is expected to have volumes in the range of 12-44 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent.
Aasta Hansteen is the biggest ongoing field development project in the Norwegian Sea, with the production start-up planned in 2017.
Statoil Petroleum operates the PL602 with 42.5% stake while other partners include Petoro (20%), Centrica Resources (Norge) (20%), Wintershall Norge (10%) and Atlantic Petroleum Norge (7.5%).
