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Lease interests transferred to Pantheon
Halliburton and its joint venture Red Technology Alliance have relinquished their 25% ownership interests in Great Bear leases Alan Bailey for Petroleum News
Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas has reported that 25% working interests owned by Halliburton Energy Services LLC and Red Technology Alliance LLC in North Slope leases operated by Great Bear Petroleum Ventures have been transferred to Great Bear. Great Bear is wholly owned by Pantheon Resources Plc. There are six leases involved, all south of Prudhoe Bay. Halliburton had a 25% interest in one lease, while Red Technology had a 25% interest in the others. Great Bear now has a 100% working interest in four of the leases. The company has a 92% interest in the other two leases, with Borealis Alaska owning the remaining 8% interests in these leases.
Red Technology is a joint venture between Riverstone Holdings LLC and Halliburton Energy Services. Borealis is owned by Australian company Otto Energy.
Involvement in 2011 Halliburton’s involvement with Great Bear goes back to 2011, when Halliburton decided to partner with Great Bear in planned drilling to test North Slope shale oil potential near the Dalton Highway. The partnership involved Halliburton paying the cost of Great Bear’s first two wells in exchange for 25% interests in leases in the more northerly part of Great Bear’s acreage. In 2013 Red Technology Alliance acquired a 25% working interest in some Great Bear leases.
After the drilling of the first two shale oil test wells, Great Bear moved its focus to exploration for conventional oil resources in the same general area where it had shale oil interests. The concept has been to use a conventional development as a means of establishing infrastructure that might support the economics of a subsequent shale oil development.
In April 2019 Pantheon, by then owner of Great Bear, announced an oil discovery in its Alkaid No. 1 well, west of the Dalton Highway. Pantheon subsequently said that it was combining the Alkaid prospect with the adjacent Phecda prospect as a potential oil development project, with a possible 900 million barrels of oil in place. In October 2019 the company announced that it was acquiring Halliburton’s 25% interest in the project. The Alkaid well appears to be located in one of the leases included in the transfer of working interests that the Division of Oil and Gas has now announced.
And, according to the latest division lease ownership report, neither Halliburton nor Red Technology appears to now have any ownership interest in North Slope leases.
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