|
Explorers 2025: Welcome to The Explorers 2025
Armstrong exploration drilling extends Brookian topset fairway 94 miles east
Kay Cashman Petroleum News
Kudos to the explorers featured in this year's issue of The Explorers magazine: Armstrong's Lagniappe, ConocoPhillips Alaska, 88 Energy, Glacier's Savant, Great Bear Pantheon, Hilcorp and Jade Energy.
In 2013, Armstrong Oil & Gas Inc. and its partner Repsol kicked off the prolific Brookian topset play with the 2 billion barrel plus oil discovery in the Pikka field west of the central North Slope, the largest component being the Nanushuk reservoir.
Since that discovery, the oil industry on the North Slope has been on a tear, drilling and making large lookalike discoveries at Horseshoe, Putu, Mitquq, Stirrup, Willow and elsewhere.
With Armstrong's understanding of these new discoveries, the company identified multiple lookalike prospects on the eastern North Slope.
Lagniappe, an Armstrong affiliate (holding a 25% working interest ownership). drilled three of these eastern North Slope prospects during the 2023-2024 winter exploration season as operator on behalf of partners APA Alaska LLC (Apache 50% WIO), and Oil Search (Alaska) LLC (25% WIO), a Santos affiliate company.
In the 2024-2025 winter season operator Lagniappe continued to target large 3D-defined opportunities. Their Sockeye-2 discovery is very similar to the pay sands at Willow and Alpine, except the permeabilities at Sockeye appear to be substantially better ' maybe 10-times better. The oil is medium gravity, low viscosity, sweet oil.
The targeted objectives are slightly younger than what Santos is developing at Pikka et al but with better reservoir qualities ' porosity and permeability ' even though they are somewhat deeper.
The Sockeye prospect is AVO supported across 30,000 acres, and confirms the partners' geologic and geophysical models, de-risking numerous additional prospects in the area.
ConocoPhillips Alaska In the 24 years since ConocoPhillips was created through a merger, its Alaska subsidiary, ConocoPhillips Alaska, has pursued new oil in Alaska through wildcats, through infrastructure-led exploration, and through development within its units.
In the past five years, ConocoPhillips Alaska has increasingly favored growth at its existing units and infrastructure-led exploration over the thrill of far-flung exploration.
But should the Trump administration succeed in opening more of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to oil and gas exploration and development, ConocoPhillips Alaska is in a good position to expand its exploration west of its Willow project in NPR-A.
Kirk Johnson, ConocoPhillips senior vice president, global operations, said in the company's fourth quarter earnings conference call on Feb. 6, 2025, that: 'Fundamentally, we believe that continued exploration west of Willow, it's the right thing to do for energy. It's the right thing to do for the state of Alaska and its stakeholders. And clearly, we're in a really good position. We're putting ourselves in a position to continue exploring west of Willow, as that's enabled for us.'
88 Energy The successful flow test at the Hickory-1 well on Alaska's central North Slope was a key milestone for 88 Energy's Project Phoenix, validating the potential of multiple primary and secondary reservoirs. The company said it confirmed the presence of mobile hydrocarbons, achieving natural oil flow (no nitrogen lift) to surface, an indicator of commercial potential.
2024 also saw progress at 88 Energy's Leonis Project, where the completion of an independent certified resource estimate highlighted the potential of the Upper Schrader Bluff reservoir. This paved the way for the launch of a formal farm-out process aimed at accelerating exploration via a planned exploration well, the Tiri-1.
Approximately 10,000 acres of newly leased state of Alaska land grew Leonis to more than 35,000 contiguous acres with targeting based on additional prospectivity mapped within the deeper Canning formation reservoir interval, enhancing Leonis' position as a highly prospective, multi-zone opportunity, 88 Energy said.
Glacier Glacier Oil & Gas has continued to vet-out recently identified drill targets in the Badami and Killian sands in and near the Savant Alaska-operated Badami unit on the eastern North Slope.
Glacier is planning another Badami exploration well in 2025 and its East Pad construction is on track to begin in the summer of 2026.
Great Bear Pantheon Great Bear Pantheon spud the Megrez No. 1 well in November 2024. The exploration well targeted 'three topset horizons which Pantheon estimates to contain an aggregate 2U prospective resource of 609 million barrels of ANS crude (oil, condensate and NGLs) and 3.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.'
Megrez No. 1 was drilled at a 45-degree angle to penetrate multiple horizons and to guide the design of future long laterals with multi-stage completions in deeper horizons.
In an announcement in early March 2025, Pantheon Resources said that early results from Megrez No. 1 indicated 'seven discrete interpreted pay zones, with flow testing of the shallowest six to commence before the end of March 2025' and last four months.
Those six zones, from deepest to shallowest, are the Upper Schrader Bluff Topset 1, the Prince Creek (lower), the Prince Creek (upper), the Lower Sagavanirktok 3, the Lower Sagavanirktok 2, and Lower Sagavanirktok 1. Testing of each interval was projected to last approximately two weeks with the full testing program lasting as long as four months.
Hilcorp Hilcorp's focus, nationally and in Alaska, is on maximizing production from mature fields in established/developed areas, including the Cook Inlet basin and on the North Slope.
But in the summer of 2025 Hilcorp plans to drill two exploration wells in undeveloped acreage in Interior Alaska in partnership with Doyon Ltd., specifically in subsurface owned by Doyon in the Yukon Flats on surface land owned by Tihteet'Aii, the Native corporation for the village of Birch Creek.
Jade Energy Erik Opstad's Jade Energy is gaining ground at its Sourdough prospect on the far eastern North Slope.
Sourdough holds BP's two 1990s oil discovery wells, Sourdough 2 and 3.
In 1997 BP estimated the prospect held 100 million barrels of recoverable oil.
But BP never pursued development because at the time there was no pipeline near the Sourdough prospect, which borders the 1002 Area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
One hundred million barrels of oil did not justify the cost of a pipeline and related facilities.
Since that time the Point Thomson project has been developed, with the field in production and a pipeline connecting the unit and the Badami unit to the west.
Jade has been advancing understanding of the high-pressure reservoir and requirements for development since the initial 3D seismic survey covering the Sourdough prospect (Yukon 3D data set), that was conducted by Jade stakeholders in 2018.
This issue of The Explorers also contains a chapter on the state of Alaska's exploration licensing program, including geothermal licensing.
| 