Independent oil and gas company Renaissance Alaska LLC has secured initial funding for the exploration and development of leases in Alaska. Capital from ARC Energy Fund 5, a private equity fund managed by Canadian company ARC Financial Corp., has enabled Renaissance to purchase oil and gas leases and commit to a program of Alaska exploration, Renaissance co-founder Mark Landt told Petroleum News Dec. 6.
“We’re setting up an office in Anchorage right away,” he said.
ARC Financial Corp. is a private investment management firm located in Calgary, Alberta, that specializes in emerging companies the energy sector. According to the ARC web site, since 1989 ARC has managed the investment of more than $750 million in more than 120 early-start companies and has produced outstanding returns for its investors.
Acreage acquired
Renaissance has acquired 90,564 net acres of Alaska leases, primarily from Rutter and Wilbanks Corp. The company is also in the process of acquiring an additional 26,610 acres that Rutter and Wilbanks obtained in the State of Alaska’s May Cook Inlet areawide lease sale. The Renaissance leases are on the Kenai Peninsula, offshore in Cook Inlet and in the Umiat oil field at the eastern edge of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
The Cook Inlet leases include the offshore Northern Lights prospect that has in the past been estimated to contain 111 million to 358 barrels of oil equivalent. Rutter and Wilbanks has retained a 12.5 percent interest in the prospect, with Renaissance acquiring an 87.5 percent interest, Landt said. Northern Lights, also known at various times as Tyonek Deep and Sunfish, lies south of the ConocoPhillips North Cook Inlet gas field, near the center of a 23-mile long anticline.
ARCO and Phillips drilled into the Northern Lights prospect in the 1990s. Fifteen out of 17 wells were deemed productive for oil, with eight testing at initial rates of about 3,600 barrels per day from three zones, according to Paul Fenemore, the president of Prodigy Alaska, the company that bought the Northern Lights leases in 2003 — ARCO and Phillips had decided not to develop the prospect.
Rutter and Wilbanks acquired the Northern Lights leases from Prodigy in early 2006.
Kenai Peninsula acreage
The Renaissance acquisitions from Rutter and Wilbanks also include a 100 percent interest in the onshore Eagle and West Eagle prospects, east of Deep Creek on the Kenai Peninsula. And on the North Slope Renaissance has purchased a 50 percent interest in the Umiat oil field, at the eastern edge of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, with Rutter and Wilbanks retaining the remaining 50 percent interest in Umiat.
Landt said that Renaissance hopes to drill its first well in the Cook Inlet basin in 2008. That first well will likely be onshore, because of the timing of the drilling seasons, Landt said. Drilling in the offshore acreage will require a jack-up rig.
“We’re prepared to bring up our own jack-up but we’d like to work with Escopeta and possibly other partners and put together a rig consortium,” Landt said. “Once you bring a jack-up to the inlet you end up drilling all opportunities.”
Scales, Cook join team
Meantime Renaissance is staffing its Alaska operation. Nick Scales, who has been working on jack-up rigs offshore Louisiana, is joining the company in Alaska as a full-time employee. Scales worked in drilling for BP and ARCO in Alaska for several years, and has also worked for Arctic Slope Regional Corp.
Mike Cook, Scales’ most recent boss, will also join Renaissance in Alaska. Landt said Cook’s experience with jack-up rigs offshore Louisiana would prove valuable to the company.
In addition to Landt, Renaissance employees include the company’s other co-founders James Watt and W. Allen Huckabay.
Landt worked at ARCO Alaska from 1992 to 1997, serving initially as district land manager for the Cook Inlet.
“Sunfish and North Foreland were my wells,” he told Petroleum News in a 2001 interview. “I saw an opportunity south of the North Cook Inlet field but ARCO walked away from it.”
Landt later became vice president of land and new business ventures for Prodigy, in which position he pushed the potential of the Northern Lights prospect. The subsequent purchase of the prospect by Rutter and Wilbanks, described by Landt as an “angel investor,” has now provided an opportunity for Landt to become involved with the prospect again.
