Savant completes ice road to Badami

Savant Alaska has completed its 27.5-mile ice road from the eastern end of the North Slope road system to the Badami field, in preparation for the company’s winter drilling program at Badami, Savant executive Greg Vigil told Petroleum News Jan. 6.

The company is planning to use Doyon rig 15 to complete the drilling of well B1-38, to test the Red Wolf prospect, an oil prospect in the middle Ellesmerian Kekiktuk formation, a rock unit equivalent to the oil reservoir in BP’s Endicott field. Savant also plans to drill a horizontal sidetrack into younger and shallower Brookian rocks from the Badami B1-18 well, to evaluate the use of horizontal wells for oil production from the challenging Brookian reservoir of the Badami field.

The ice road, completed on Jan. 4, followed an inland route that enabled road construction to be finished 70 days earlier than the road on sea ice that Savant constructed in 2009, thus substantially increasing the length of the winter drilling window, Vigil said.

“One significant factor that contributed to our early, safe and environmentally compliant completion of the tundra winter road was the professionalism, responsiveness and cooperation of the various regulatory personnel at the Alaska Department of Natural Resources and the North Slope Borough in their review, processing and authorizations of the numerous permits, amendments and administrative approvals necessary to conduct the work,” Vigil said. “Our contractors, CH2M Hill and Cruz Construction, also did an excellent job in constructing the road ahead of schedule and on budget.”

Vigil said that Savant is keen to ensure that capital expenditure credits and net operating loss credits available under the state’s ACES production tax are maintained or improved — the company views these credits as critical to the economics of its Badami project. However, the progressive tax rates under ACES would render the Badami work uneconomic, were it not for the fact that the Badami field infrastructure and export pipeline are already in place, Savant said.

—Alan Bailey