|
Doyon starts work on 3-D at Nenana basin
TIM BRADNER For Petroleum News
Doyon Ltd. has started work on a new 3-D seismic survey in the Nenana basin a few miles north of where the Fairbanks-based Alaska Native regional corporation drilled its Toghotthele No. 1 exploration well in 2016 with a partner, another Native regional corporation, Cook Inlet Region Inc. of Anchorage.
Geokinetics Inc. is the seismic contractor on the new work this winter, which will cover a 64-square-mile block with a single 10-mile line of 2-D seismic that will tie the data gathered this year in with seismic information from previous years as well as data from the Toghotthele No. 1 well, according to Jim Mery, Doyon’s senior vice president for lands and resources.
Toghotthele was the third well Doyon has drilled in a decade-long exploration program in the basin. Two of the wells were drilled with partners with one well funded by Doyon alone. CIRI may join Doyon as a partner in the new exploration, according to sources.
“The center of the 64 square miles being surveyed is about 12 miles north of the Toghotthele well, and southwest of Old Minto village,” Mery said. Old Minto is a traditional Athabascan village, now used seasonally, on the Tanana River northwest of Nenana. The area is near, but not in, the Minto Lakes.
Local employment Doyon is already boosting local employment with the project. “The start-up local hire is at 22 with opportunities for more in later stages of the project. Work will likely run through mid-April,” Mery said.
About 60 percent of the land in the 3-D survey is state-owned land on which Doyon holds leases with the remaining lands privately owned, the surface lands by Toghotthele Corp., the Native village corporation of Nenana, and Doyon itself as the owner of subsurface mineral rights.
Mery said there are several prospects in the area north of the Toghotthele well that are worth investigating. “We continue to find oil and gas shows in our wells. We did find free gas in the Toghotthele well, but not a substantial amount. It did indicate that there is an active system out there,” generating oil and gas, he said.
“We know there is oil and gas. What we need to find are the traps,” or reservoir formations which can trap the hydrocarbons in a deposit that can be produced.
Geologists have said previously that the northern part of the Nenana basin might have good potential because petroleum-generating source rocks appear to be deeper, which would improve the prospects for discoveries.
Doyon holds oil and gas leases on approximately 230,000 acres of state lands in the basin and directly owns subsurface rights to an additional 42,000 acres, with Toghotthele Corp. as the surface owner.
The corporation is one of the largest private landowners in the nation, with rights to 12.5 million acres of land in Interior Alaska obtained under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971.
| 