Shell actively working Hammerhead, aims to drill first Beaufort well in ’07

Shell is actively working the Hammerhead prospect it acquired in the U.S. Minerals Management Services’ Beaufort Sea sale earlier this year, geologist Tom Homza, Shell’s Anchorage office manager, said Oct. 19.

Shell won 84 blocks, some 465,000 acres, in the MMS lease sale in March, including Hammerhead and multiple exploration plays, and Homza said the company plans many additional investments in Alaska.

Shell is not new to Alaska: It left Alaska in 1998 when it sold its remaining Cook Inlet properties to XTO. Shell was active in the inlet beginning in the 1960s, in the Gulf of Alaska in the 1970s, and in the Beaufort, Bering and Chukchi in 1982-1991.

Petroleum News reported this summer that the company planned to shoot seismic in the Beaufort, and Homza said Shell will use WesternGeco’s MV Gilavar for a 2006 3-D shoot. The company will permit multiple locations, he said, to provide for maximum flexibility. The company acquired Beaufort Sea acreage at OCS lease sale 195, and more recently from EnCana (see page 1 story). Following 3-D seismic acquisition in the summer of 2006, Shell hopes to drill its first Beaufort well “in 2007,” Homza said without specifying whether it will be the winter of 2006-07 or 2007-08.

—Kristen Nelson