The 92,000-plus acre lease block is in the highly prospective Nanushuk play fairway and lies on the eastern edge of the 970,000 acres Armstrong won in a federal lease sale late last year and just west of ConocoPhillips Harpoon prospect.

"We definitely have plans to drill it, but we don't know the timing of that drilling yet. We're taking the lessons we learned from Pikka and applying them there," Armstrong Oil & Gas CEO Bill Armstrong told Petroleum News this morning.

"We are excited about our new partnership with Borealis at Castle West. The Nanushuk play on the North Slope of Alaska is currently the world's hottest, conventional, onshore oil play. Since our discovery of the multibillion barrel Pikka field in 2013, the Nanushuk play has had an extremely high exploration success rate with five large new discoveries, yet the play is still in its infancy and has barely been explored," Armstrong was quoted as saying in the press release Borealis sent out earlier this morning

"We are very pleased to work with Armstrong considering their prominent successes in the North Slope over the past two decades," Doris Cheng, Borealis Alaska Oil CEO, said in the release.

Borealis has 206,966 total acres in the Castle Prospect, including two drill ready prospects outside the Castle West area, and 74,667 acres at its Grey Owl prospect on the eastern North Slope, 25 miles south of the Badami unit.

- KAY CASHMAN

See full story in March 1 issue, available online Friday, Feb. 28, at www.PetroleumNews.com

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