Oil Patch Insider

Talisman’s FEX shoots for 3 NPR-A wells

In last week’s Oil Patch Insider, Petroleum News carried a story about the positive results Talisman Energy’s FEX L.P. was reportedly getting from its wildcat drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

Since then, FEX has sent us photos of both drill sites. On page 1 is the Nabors 14E drilling Aklaqyaaq No. 1, and on this page is the Akita-Doyon Arctic Wolf Rig drilling the Amaguq No. 2 well.

The timeline is tight, but despite weather-related delays (experienced by all operators across the North Slope this winter), the company still hopes to drill a third well, the Aklaq No. 6, this season, using the Arctic Wolf.

In a speech earlier this year FEX’s senior manager of exploration, Tim England, said his company has almost 1.5 million gross acres under lease on and offshore NPR-A, and was continuing “deep drilling” done by industry in the early 1980s in the petroleum reserve.

England ended his speech with a photograph of the Cape Simpson oil seep on the Beaufort Sea coast of NPR-A: “It’s still there and it’s massive,” he said. “… There is the potential for massive deposits untapped … out in NPR-A, but we need to drill a whole bunch more wells to find them.”

According to comments made by Talisman executives in a March 1 conference call for analysts, FEX might just have tapped into some of those riches. Talisman CEO Jim Buckee said, among other things, “the operation’s been going very well. ...We have seen some uphole gas. Hydrocarbons are not a problem ... Amaguq can be very large, and ... I think they’re both in several hundred millions and Amaguq, in my mind can be a billion.”

Read more in last week’s Insider at:

http://www.petroleumnews.com/pnads/211566063.shtml

—Kay Cashman