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Explorers 2025: Great Bear Pantheon stays the course
Joint venture has become a reliable presence on the North Slope in recent years.
Eric Lidji for Petroleum News
There are no overnight successes in the Alaska oil industry. Even if an exploration well yields monster results, it only begins the long process of permitting, development, and delivery required to get the resources from underground reservoirs to the marketplace.
Alaska and especially its rugged and isolated North Slope has long favored -- and sometimes even rewarded -- companies willing to endure this slog for season after season.
In that regard, Great Bear Pantheon has been paying its dues.
The company arrived in Alaska some 15 years ago with a radically ambitious plan to bring Lower 48 style source rock development to the massive North Slope petroleum systems. Setting aside any geological considerations, the project would have required major adjustments throughout the entire Alaska oil industry and its regulatory structure.
After a few years, the company pivoted. It would now use conventional oil production in the short term to de-risk and then to finance a larger unconventional project in the future.
Through a partnership with Pantheon Resources plc, the new Great Bear Pantheon joint venture has been pursuing that new strategy for the past decade, becoming a consistent presence on the North Slope exploration calendar in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
Megrez Great Bear Pantheon spud the Megrez No. 1 well in November 2024 using Nabors 105AC rig. 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.
The three shallower Lower Sagavanirktok zones were not preliminary targets and were not included in the original resource estimate for the project but were added to the pending flow test program based upon promising results from logs and cuttings to date.
The company will not flow test the deepest and smallest horizon -- the Upper Schrader Bluff Topset 3. "Full cores were taken over this horizon and flow testing from a single stage treatment in this wellbore would provide little additional data at this location."
The company expects to require hydraulic stimulation for the deeper zones and suggested that it could face delays based on securing pumping equipment on the North Slope, according to the company. The shallower horizons "are not expected to require the same degree of stimulation and are less susceptible to scheduling constraints."
The announcement did not provide flow rates but provided "potential" flow rates based on "analyses of analogous offsets." The company designed its flow test to "prioritize data quality rather than seeking to maximize initial flow rates in order to accentuate the understanding of the reservoirs to optimize future appraisal and development."
"Successful flow tests in the deeper zones would demonstrate their suitability to incorporate additional future 10,000-foot lateral completions of wells from the Megrez Pad into the overall Ahpun development plan, utilizing the same processing infrastructure to deliver higher economic returns," Pantheon Resources CEO Max Easley said in a statement in early March 2025. "Anticipated results from the shallower horizons would, if successful, support a truly conventional development, analogous to the Pikka and Willow fields (i.e. utilizing secondary and tertiary recovery techniques)."
The flow test program would be financed through a $35 million convertible bond issuance, led by Sun Hung Kai & Co. Ltd., expected to close before the end of March.
The company also said that it is moving toward a future U.S. stock listing.
Talitha and Theta West Great Bear Pantheon drilled the Talitha A well in 2021, encountering oil in five oil horizons. The company proposed but never pursued an associated Talitha B well.
Instead, Great Bear Pantheon drilled the Theta West No. 1 well in late January 2022 as a step out from Talitha A to confirm details about the well and the associated reservoir.
Theta West was a top discovery worldwide in 2022, according to Wood Mackenzie. "In fact, it was the largest onshore discovery last year," then-Pantheon CEO Jay Cheatham said in June 2023. "It was in the top five, but the largest onshore and the only one in a tax royalty regime; all the others are in deep water production sharing contracts offshore."
In early April 2025, the state Division of Oil and Gas issued a public notice for a proposed Dubhe No. 1 exploration well at the Talitha unit. Great Bear Pantheon would build a new gravel pad 1,500 feet west of the Dalton Highway, some 27 miles south of Deadhorse.
Gravel work would begin May 15, drilling between July and October 2025, and then flow testing. The company would "conduct sufficient production testing to determine the long-term production potential of the reservoir, including initial production rate and decline curve profile, expected to be 60-90 days, but may need to extend to up to 6-months."
History Great Bear Petroleum LLC arrived in Alaska in 2010 with a plan to develop the source rock underlying the massive North Slope petroleum system. A new strategy in 2015 called for using conventional production to finance future unconventional development.
A partnership with British independent Pantheon Resources plc created the joint venture Great Bear Pantheon. The joint venture has been pursuing three prospects: Greater Alkaid, Talitha and Theta West. As part of efforts to streamline administrative burden, these three prospects were later consolidated into the Kodiak and Ahpun fields.
These prospects are located in the central North Slope, south of Prudhoe Bay, near the Dalton Highway, providing year-round access that is unavailable to most explorers.
Great Bear Pantheon completed three exploration wells at the Talitha and Theta prospects in April 2022 and two more at the Alkaid prospect between August and October 2022.
Great Bear drilled the Alkaid No. 1 well in early 2015. Great Bear Pantheon re-entered the well in early 2019 to flow test it. The company subsequently combined Alkaid with the nearby Phecda prospect into a single project called the Greater Alkaid prospect.
The coronavirus pandemic and subsequent crash in global oil prices prevented Great Bear Pantheon from bringing the field online in summer 2020, as initially planned. The joint venture returned in summer 2022 with the Alkaid No. 2 well, a horizontal appraisal well. The well came online in December 2022. Great Bear Pantheon re-entered Alkaid No. 2 well in late 2023 to learn more about the down-hole characteristics of the well.
Great Bear Pantheon entered into a Gas Sales Precedent Agreement with the Alaska Gasline Development Corp. in June 2024. Under the agreement, Pantheon would provide up to 500 million cubic feet of gas to Southcentral Alaska as the sole supplier of a future natural gas pipeline "on terms that provide funding capacity to support all of Pantheon's expected development costs after Ahpun Field Final Investment Decision."
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