Wintershall confirms oil discovery off Norway

OSLO May 22 (Reuters) - Germany's Wintershall, the oil and gas arm of chemicals group BASF, confirmed an oil discovery off Norway near the Kristin field in the Norwegian Sea, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate said in a statement on Tuesday.

"The well encountered a 39-metre thick oil column in the Garn formation with reservoir and reservoir quality as expected," it said.

"Preliminary calculations confirm earlier resource estimates, though at the upper end of the discovery estimate," it added.

An earlier estimate for the discovery was for between 10 and 20 million standard cubic metres of recoverable oil and between 2 and 5 billion cubic meters of recoverable gas, it added. (Reporting by Balazs Koranyi)