Upbeat article from Petroleum News
I would add,
pending funding and rig....
Otto has ~10% WI and option to participate in 2 wells capped at USD2.6m each net to Otto.
Talitha a go
Pantheon to drill 2020-21winter exploration well followed by Alkaid producer
Kay Cashman
Petroleum News
Pantheon Resources, owner of Great Bear and its North Slope oil and gas assets, is planning to drill an exploration well in its Talitha prospect this coming winter. Adding Pantheon’s well, Talitha 1, to 88 Energy’s two wells will bring the number of Alaska North Slope exploration wells in the 2020-21 off-road season to three; or as many as seven if ConocoPhillips resumes its delayed exploration program.
The Talitha well will be followed by a development well at Pantheon’s Alkaid project sometime in the next year. The timing of Alkaid drilling is subject to the outcome of current farm-out discussions.
The new Alkaid well has the potential to be completed as a producer via the “installation of an Early Production Unit facility,” Pat Galvin, Pantheon’s chief commercial officer in Alaska, told Petroleum News in a July 22 email.
The company is in the process of applying for two new units, one at Talitha and one at Alkaid, he said.
Alkaid has the advantage of being located along the Dalton Highway and trans-Alaska oil pipeline which “could expedite low cost early production,” Galvin said.
“Pantheon is speaking to a number of parties about partnering to jointly exploit and develop both of these projects,” he said.
Pantheon owns 89.2% of the Talitha project and 100% of the Alkaid project.
Talitha offsets old ARCO well
The Talitha project contains “three mutually exclusive and independent geological formations with different reservoir trap geometries, qualities and risk profiles,” Galvin said. All of which were penetrated and confirmed to be oil bearing in the Pipeline State No. 1 well drilled by ARCO, predecessor to ConocoPhillips, in 1988, which the new Talitha 1 well will offset.
In late March, Pantheon announced that it had completed its analysis of the shallowest of these three horizons, the “Shelf Margin Deltaic,” a Brookian aged reservoir, which it estimated to contain 1.8 billion barrels of oil in place with a P50 technically recoverable resource of 483 million barrels of oil, which were “significantly higher” than pre-analysis expectation, Galvin said.
The two deeper zones at Talitha, the Brookian Slope Fan System and the Kuparuk “also offer significant potential,” with the company due to complete its analysis of the Kuparuk and provide resource estimates “in the near future,” he said.
Two new pads along Dalton
The April 26 issue of Petroleum News reported that Pantheon (in Great Bear’s name) had begun permitting for two pads along the Dalton Highway, as well as filed a major amendment application for its oil discharge prevention and contingency plan.
The oil discharge prevention and contingency plan was approved under the Great Bear Petroleum Operating name in early 2017.
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said in an April 17 public notice that the company’s existing plan addresses year-round exploration drilling from sites approved for all season drilling and winter-only exploration drilling from ice pads connected to North Slope infrastructure via the Dalton Highway and ice roads.
The major amendment the company submitted would add two new locations to the plan - the Alkaid and Phecda road pads, as well as updating maps and figures and response planning standards to increase oil storage tank capacity from 400 barrels to 600 barrels and to increase the summer drilling response planning standards from 1,000 barrels per day to 5,500 bpd for 15 days, totaling 82,500 barrels.
There is no date given for pad construction.
Four wells drilled to date
Pantheon/Great Bear has drilled four wells off the Dalton highway to date - three are plugged and abandoned (Alcor 1, Merak 1 and Winx 1) and one well, Alkaid 1, is suspended.
In actuality, Winx 1 was drilled by 88 Energy subsidiary Accumulate Energy Alaska, although permitting was submitted under Great Bear’s name.
The Alcor and Merak wells were drilled in 2012, Alkaid was drilled in 2015 and re-entered and flow tested in 2019; Winx was drilled in 2019.
In its DEC application Pantheon said the pads would be constructed of timber rig mats, “in some cases supplemented with existing gravel pads.” The pads would be 400 by 400 feet and would support all season drilling.
The suspended Alkaid well is some two and a half miles west of the Dalton Highway and northwest of the Phecda Road Pad site. That well was drilled from an ice pad.
Pantheon said after the well was flow tested in 2019 that it confirmed a new Brookian light oil discovery just west of the Dalton Highway. The company also said it viewed the nearby Phecda prospect as an appraisal well for the Alkaid discovery, rather than a standalone well.
Aggressive bidding at lease sale
The state of Alaska drew 56 bids on 56 tracts in the North Slope areawide sale Dec. 11, with Great Bear taking 17 tracts on 27,840 acres for $849,094. The company was second only to Oil Search in the number of tracts it won.
“The new leases are strategically positioned in two areas contiguous or adjacent to our current acreage on our northern and southwestern boundaries,” Pantheon said in a Dec. 12 statement, noting it had a competitive advantage given it “owns the proprietary 3D seismic which covers the leases,” and had technical work completed in recent months.
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