88 Energy described the project as an attempt to “better...

88 Energy described the project as an attempt to “better quantify risk so that a farm-out can be achieved in 2016.” The company drilled Icewine No. 1 to 11,600 feet total depth and is in the process of finalizing the depth for the second well, a process expected to be finalized before fourth quarter. Plans for Icewine include conventional exploitation In addition to completing and flow testing Icewine No. 2 in 2017, 88 Energy said it would be “drilling on neighboring acreage targeting conventional prospects” and that it did plan to “access conventional resource potential.” The 2-D seismic acquired in the first quarter of this year was, among other things, designed to “identify large conventional leads in areas high ranked by regional play fairway mapping.” The company said Icewine No.1 proved the presence of working petroleum systems in both the Brookian and Beaufortian sequences. The mid-September presentation said there were oil and gas shows throughout the Brookian and a conventional discovery in the Kuparuk formation. And that the traps were “structural, stratigraphic or combination thereof.” Seismic processing of the Icewine 2-D dataset was expected to be completed in mid-September. The 2-D seismic was also intended to identify high grade prospective areas across the project’s acreage that would warrant future 3-D seismic coverage. “The high recovery factor in all three cores taken, including the primary HRZ target and across the bottom seal for the HRZ (Pebble Shale), means that we have excellent data to use in the evaluation of the potentially huge unconventional prize on the Project Icewine acreage,” 88 Energy Managing Director Dave Wall said in a Dec. 28 drilling update for Icewine No. 1. Earlier this year, DeGolyer & MacNaughton estimated that the HRZ shale at Icewine contained 985.3 million barrels of liquids in a mean case. The estimate included both oil and wet natural gas and condensate. Internally, the two partners believe the prospect contains more than 2.6 billion barrels of liquids in a mean case. The difference, according to 88 Energy, comes from a disagreement over how much of the acreage is productive. The second well, 88 Energy said, will test HRZ/HUE source rocks with “potential for significant resource upgrade.” In previous presentations 88 Energy said it expected to drill as many as 1,200 wells to develop the entire Icewine prospect - between 10 billion and 21 billion barrels of oil in place, depending on the differing estimates. The development would include 30 wells each from 40 pads, with eight processing facilities. By comparison, more than 3,400 wells have been drilled to pursue the approximately 25 billion barrels of oil in place at the Prudhoe Bay unit. Nothing like Icewine yet in world The Icewine project has been compared to the Eagle Ford shale of Texas, but the geology is is different, Basinski said. The Alaska prospect is highly porous. Rather than traditional shale, “it’s a volcanic rock and there’s not a productive play like this in the world yet,” he said in a previous interview. Burgundy acquired the initial Icewine acreage in 2012 and sold a majority interest in the prospect to Accumulate Energy Alaska in late 2014. The project straddles the Dalton Highway, also known as the Haul Road, and the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. 88 Energy holds a 77.5 percent working interest in the acreage, Burgundy 22.5 percent.