“Savant Alaska LLC has affirmatively 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 Feb. 10 in an email.

Savant Alaska, a subsidiary of Denver independent Savant Resources, is drilling wells at Badami through an arrangement with unit operator BP. Savant holds a 90 percent working interest in the two wells. ASRC Exploration has the other 10 percent interest.

BP hopes improved recovery rates can jump-start the field, which has been shut down since the fall of 2007.

Savant recently completed drilling at the Red Wolf well. (See story “Good news at Badami?” in the Feb. 7 edition of Petroleum News.)

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

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.”

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 #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.”

Editor’s note: See full story in the Feb. 14 issue of Petroleum News, which will be available online at noon on Friday to subscribers at www.petroleumnews.com.