Conoco applies for Bear Tooth permit

ConocoPhillips has applied for a drilling permit in the Bear Tooth unit.

The company is asking for permission to drill the Cassin No. 1 well in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska unit, according to U.S. Bureau of Land Management filings.

Cassin No. 1 would be on lease AA081754, in the middle of the unit. The lease is included in Unit Area A, a subset of the unit designated for initial work commitments.

Earlier this year, ConocoPhillips staked nine potential well locations in the NPR-A, two in its Mooses Tooth unit and seven in the Bear Tooth unit (five wells and two sidetracks).

The 2009 Bear Tooth unit agreement required ConocoPhillips to drill a well in Unit Area A and to test a previous well it drilled in the unit — Scout No. 1 — by June 1, 2012.

In June 2011, the BLM gave ConocoPhillips a one-year extension to those deadlines because the company showed “diligence” in evaluating the area, including drilling Scout No. 1, reprocessing seismic in 2009 and refining hydrocarbon prospects in 2010.

ConocoPhillips “has established that producible hydrocarbons have been encountered in the Scout No. 1 well sufficient to demonstrate that a prudent operator would maintain the lease for future development,” the BLM wrote in its decision to extend the unit terms.

—Eric Lidji