Eastern North Slope Badami field to be restarted in September

Greg Vigil, executive vice president of Savant Alaska, says the eastern North Slope Badami field will be back online by September 2010.

“Savant Alaska LLC has … elected to have BP restart the Badami Plant for the purpose of resuming production from certain existing Badami Sand Participation Area wells, flow testing the B1-38 (Red Wolf) exploration well and evaluating the performance of the planned B1-18 sidetrack well,” Vigil told Petroleum News in a Feb. 10 e-mail.

By restarting Badami, “we will be able to fully evaluate the prospective zones in the B1-38 exploration well and better determine if horizontal drilling will help unlock the extensive Badami Sands oil resource,” he said.

Savant, which holds a 90 percent working interest in the two wells, is drilling at Badami through an arrangement with unit operator BP. ASRC Exploration has the remaining 10 percent interest in the two new wells.

BP hopes improved oil recovery rates can jump-start the field, which came online in 1998 and has since been repeatedly shut-in and restarted due to exceedingly low production rates. BP originally expected to produce 30,000 barrels per day from Badami, but while early production ramped up as expected, it soon fizzled, dropping to only about 900 bpd in 2007.

The Red Wolf B1-38 well is primarily targeting oil in the Middle Ellesmerian Kekiktuk formation, a deeper and older geologic formation than the Brookian turbidite sands where previous Badami development by BP occurred from six vertical and near-vertical wells. (BP’s highly efficient Endicott field produces oil from the Kekiktuk, and Red Wolf is down-trend from BP’s Beaufort Sea, 100 million-barrel Liberty project, in the same fault block as Liberty’s discovery well.)

Savant’s sidetrack to BP’s existing vertical well, B1-18, will be the first redevelopment well in the Badami unit, which was last shut down in 2007.

All drilling is being done from the unit’s single, compact pad, B1, which also holds the Badami Plant — i.e. production facility.

Savant recently completed drilling the B1-38 well, where it was rumored to have an oil discovery. The Denver independent’s Red Wolf prospect is in the western part of the Badami unit. (See story “Good news at Badami?” in the Feb. 7 edition of Petroleum News.)

After drilling the B1-18 sidetrack, B1-38 will be tested.

“That will be a very short-term test. The long-term test will happen after the plant is restarted,” Vigil said.

“Doyon Rig 15 is now on B1-18. The first order of business is to plug and abandon the B1-18. After that is complete, the sidetrack operation will commence.”

The existing “tundra ice road to Badami will be utilized to support the initial plant restart efforts by the companies including the movement of certain components of the facility which will be upgraded or rebuilt during the winter ice road season,” Vigil said.

The B1-18 sidetrack targets the Badami Sands and is “intended to horizontally penetrate between 600 and 2000 feet of interval near the original Badami No. 1 discovery well.”

The discovery well was drilled by Conoco in 1990 and had “an initial drill stem test in excess of 4,000 barrels of oil per day in the Badami Sands. The sidetrack will prove whether or not more of the Badami Sands can be connected with horizontal well construction,” Vigil said, noting Savant “intends to gather important formation pressure data during the drilling operation utilizing Halliburton’s GeoTap service.”

ASRC, Savant pleased with venture

“We look forward to working closely with BP and our working interest partner ASRC in taking this important step in determining the long-term viability of further redevelopment at Badami. We are grateful for the dedicated efforts of our employees, contractors, vendors, service providers and various state and local agencies without whom we would not have been able to accomplish all that we have to date,” Vigil said.

—Kay Cashman