Talisman Energy Inc. has given northeastern British Columbia a needed infusion of hope by announcing a major natural gas find that could yield 1 trillion cubic feet of reserves.
The discovery, revealed July 25, comes as the Ladyfern area, which accounted for all of Canada's increased gas output in 2001, is now into rapid decline.
Talisman is operator with a 40 percent stake. Its partners are Anadarko Petroleum Corp. 30 percent, National Fuel Exploration Corp. 20 percent and Oiltec Resources Ltd. 10 percent.
The find is in the Monkman area near Fort St. John, but the geology is entirely different from Ladyfern.
A spokesman for Talisman said Monkman is a "sequence of little fields," while Ladyfern is "one big field."
"This opens up a major potential new play system which will be easy to tie in since it is under our existing infrastructure," said Talisman president and chief executive officer Jim Buckee.
Talisman, which has produced more than 1 trillion cubic feet from the Monkman area since the 1980s, said its first deep well has tested at volumes ranging from 15 million to 37 million cubic feet per day. Initial volumes from some Ladyfern wells were a prolific 100 million cubic feet per day.
The Talisman spokesman cautioned that a number of wells, costing from C$12 million to C$16 million each, will have to be drilled across a number of locations to establish the reserve predictions.