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Benchmark looks to apply new technology Newcomer to Cook Inlet Houston-based subsidiary of Swedish company, has been in O&G business in Texas for some 30 years Alan Bailey Petroleum News
Cook Inlet newcomer Benchmark Oil and Gas Co. bid on 22 tracts across Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula in the state of Alaska’s May 24 Cook Inlet areawide lease sale. Andrew Wight, a Benchmark landman and the company’s general counsel, told Petroleum News about the company’s background and its interest in the Cook Inlet.
The company is based in Houston, Texas, but is a wholly owned subsidiary of Swedish company Benchmark Oil and Gas AB, Wight said. But the Houston company has actually been in business in Texas for several decades.
“We actually go back some 30 odd years as an independent here in Texas and we merged with the Swedish company in 2001,” Wight said.
And although the Houston company has worked in California on occasion in the past, the company currently operates in three Texas counties.
“We have on-going exploration and production right now in those areas,” Wight said.
Technology focus So why bid for leases in Alaska’s Cook Inlet?
The inlet dovetails into the company’s strategy of exploring in emerging areas where there are opportunities to use state-of- the-art 3-D seismic technology, Wight explained.
“The Cook Inlet in particular is an area that was developed quite some time ago and then it was … put aside, with the focus shifting to the North Slope,” Wight said. “We think there’s a great opportunity there to apply some new technology. … Technology is really the lynchpin of our business model.”
Wight said that Benchmark also likes to explore in areas that larger companies have found unattractive.
“We feel like that gives us a niche, using our technology, to get in and do some things in areas that have been overlooked or neglected for whatever reason by larger companies,” Wight said.
And driving a move to expand outside the company home turf in Texas is an influx of capital from the Swedish parent company’s launch in a Swedish stock exchange.
“The other thing that really led us to Alaska, that led us to broaden our horizons outside of Texas … (was that) the Swedish side of our company is going public,” Wight said. “… And so as we’re capitalized from that public offering; we plan on investing a substantial amount of that capital in Alaska and other places.”
Geologic evaluation The company used a geological evaluation to decide on which Cook Inlet tracts to bid for.
“We focused on five or six areas that contain the tracts that we bid on and each of those (areas) had various geological, geophysical data … that attracted us,” Wight said.
Wight said that once Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas has published the results of the lease sale, Benchmark will start assessing the company’s leases in detail, to determine what actions to take. With five-year terms on the leases, there is plenty of time for follow-up work on the lease purchases. So, it is too early to say when any seismic surveying, for example, might start, he said.
“We’ll be systematically going through each of the tracts that we won and applying the data, getting new data where we need it and going from there,” Wight said.
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