The Explorers 2020: Great Bear Pantheon gears up to drill Talitha
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Alaska independent plans exploration well in 2020-21 winter season, followed by Alkaid produce if partnering talks prove fruitful
Kay Cashman Petroleum News
Pantheon Resources, owner of Great Bear’s North Slope oil and gas assets, is planning to drill an exploration well in its Talitha prospect in the 2020-21 winter season via its new Alaska operating arm, Great Bear Pantheon.
The Talitha 1 well will be followed by a development well at Pantheon’s Alkaid project sometime in the next year. The timing of Alkaid drilling is subject to securing a farm-in partner.
The new Alkaid well has the potential to be completed as a producer via the “installation of an Early Production Unit facility,” Pat Galvin, Pantheon and Great Bear Pantheon’s chief commercial officer in Alaska, told Petroleum News in a July 22, 2020, email.
The company is in the process of applying for two new units, one at Talitha and one at Alkaid, he said.
Alkaid has the advantage of being located along the Dalton Highway and trans-Alaska oil pipeline which “could expedite low cost early production,” Galvin said.
“Pantheon is speaking to a number of parties about partnering to jointly exploit and develop both of these projects,” he said.
Pantheon owns 89.2% of the Talitha project and 100% of the Alkaid project.
Talitha offsets old ARCO well The Talitha project contains “three mutually exclusive and independent geological formations with different reservoir trap geometries, qualities and risk profiles,” Galvin said.
All three formations were penetrated and confirmed to be oil bearing in the Pipeline State No. 1 well drilled in 1988 by ConocoPhillips Alaska predecessor ARCO Alaska. The Talitha 1 well will offset Pipeline State No. 1.
In late March 2020, Pantheon announced that it had completed its analysis of the shallowest of these three horizons, the “Shelf Margin Deltaic,” a Brookian aged reservoir, which it estimated to contain 1.8 billion barrels of oil in place with a P50 technically recoverable resource of 483 million barrels of oil. These numbers were “significantly higher” than pre-analysis expectation, Galvin said.
The two deeper zones at Talitha, the Brookian Slope Fan System and the Kuparuk “also offer significant potential,” with the company due to complete its analysis of the Kuparuk and provide resource estimates “in the near future,” he said.
Two new pads along Dalton In April 2020 Great Bear began permitting for two pads along the Dalton Highway, as well as filed a major amendment application for its oil discharge prevention and contingency plan. (The oil discharge prevention and contingency plan was approved under the Great Bear name in early 2017, so that name continues to be used.)
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said in an April 17, 2020, public notice that the company’s existing plan addresses year-round exploration drilling from sites approved for all season drilling and winter-only exploration drilling from ice pads connected to North Slope infrastructure via the Dalton Highway and ice roads.
In its DEC application the company said the 400- by 400-foot pads would be constructed of timber rig mats, “in some cases supplemented with existing gravel pads.”
There is no date given for pad construction.
Four wells drilled to date Great Bear/Pantheon has drilled four wells off the Dalton Highway to date - three are plugged and abandoned (Alcor 1, Merak 1 and Winx 1) and one well, Alkaid 1, is suspended.
In actuality, the Winx 1 exploration well was drilled by an 88 Energy Alaska subsidiary, although permitting was submitted under Great Bear’s name.
In addition to the successful testing of the Alkaid 1 well, the 2018-19 winter exploration season included drilling Winx 1 in the western block in which Great Bear cut a deal with three independents - 88 Energy, Otto Energy and Red Emperor Resources - to cover the cost of the drilling, retaining a 10% interest in the leases.
The Alcor and Merak wells were drilled in 2012, Alkaid 1 was drilled in 2015 and re-entered and flow tested the 2018-19 winter season.
The suspended Alkaid 1 well is some 2-1/2 miles west of the Dalton Highway and northwest of the Phecda Road Pad site. That well was drilled from an ice pad.
Pantheon said after the well was flow tested in 2019 that it confirmed a new Brookian light oil discovery just west of the Dalton Highway. The company now views the Phecda prospect as part of Alkaid.
Aggressive bidding The state of Alaska drew 56 bids on 56 tracts in the North Slope areawide sale Dec. 11, 2019, with Great Bear taking 17 tracts on 27,840 acres for $849,094. The company was second only to Oil Search in the number of tracts it won.
“The new leases are strategically positioned in two areas contiguous or adjacent to our current acreage on our northern and southwestern boundaries,” Pantheon said in a Dec. 12 statement, noting it had a competitive advantage given it “owns the proprietary 3D seismic which covers the leases,” and had recently completed technical work.
Leases surrendered The May 2020 lease activity report from Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas reported that Great Bear Pantheon surrendered 11 leases. Four of the leases form a block on the western side of the North Slope south of the village of Nuiqsut, isolated from other company leases which are contiguous.
The other seven leases Great Bear Pantheon surrendered are a strip of leases on the northern edge of its southcentral North Slope lease block, and leases adjacent to those to the south on the western edge of the lease block.
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