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Tri-Valley funded to begin deep test well near Bakersfield Fewer than 70 wells of 100,000 in Kern County drilled deeper than 15,000 feet; Ekho No. 1 slated to hit 19,000 feet; target is 4 billion barrels of 42 degree gravity oil Petroleum News Alaska Staff
Tri-Valley Oil & Gas Co. confirmed Sept. 17 the receipt of complete funding from 10 Canadian resources companies on their portions of the initial test well in Project Ekho.
F. Lynn Blystone, chief executive officer of Tri-Valley, said that the first well, estimated to cost $9.5 million, is planned to 19,000 feet in the center of the south San Joaquin Valley near Bakersfield.
The Ekho No. 1 will test a mapped structure with a target of 4 billion barrels of 42 degree API gravity oil and 10 trillion cubic feet of high Btu natural gas in place in the primary objectives alone. Secondary objectives could double that, the company said.
Blow out at Middle East rates The area has emerged as North America’s hottest and biggest onshore oil and gas play ever since a well being drilled by another consortium on the northwest flank of Project Ekho blew out last November at Middle East rates, Tri-Valley said.
For more than 100 years, the San Joaquin Valley has been a prodigious contributor to the nation’s petroleum demand. Its more than 11.5 billion barrels of shallower zone production exceeds that of Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk River fields combined.
The Bakersfield area is home to 22 giant fields which have produced more than 100 million barrels, four of which have produced more than 1 billion barrels. Today, the top three producing fields in the lower 48 states are in the south San Joaquin Valley and the area production is nearly three times as much per day as the entire state of Oklahoma.
While more than 100,000 wells have been drilled in Kern County, which is the main producing area, fewer than 70 wells have penetrated below 15,000 feet and only 10 percent of those were on any meaningful structures.
Deep wells new frontier “This is an exciting new frontier to usher in the second century of the second millennium for the Bakersfield petroleum industry,” said Joseph R. Kandle, TVOG president, who has supervised several deep California wells.
Blystone, who is also CEO of the public parent, Tri-Valley Corp., said:
“The world is using oil at nearly four times its replacement rate and the U.S. is doing about the same. The ruthless consolidation of the industry, which has continued unabated for the last 18 years, is not finding new supplies quickly enough. This affords exceptional exploration opportunity for Tri-Valley, its partners and shareholders.”
TVOG will be carried on the drilling and completion costs of the first three wells and back in for a 25 percent working interest after payout on a well-by-well basis. TVOG expects to commence operations on Ekho No. 1 this quarter.
TVOG is the wholly-owned subsidiary of Tri-Valley Corp., which is publicly-traded over the counter on the electronic bulletin board under the symbol “TRIL.” Both companies have headquarters in Bakersfield, and share the Web site www.tri-valleycorp.com.
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