Oil patch insider: Glacier Oil puts North Slope Badami unit assets on market

Kay Cashman

Petroleum News

Just when we thought small independent Glacier Oil & Gas Corp. was here to stay, the company put its North Slope Badami oil field up for sale.

Asked in early November why Glacier sold its Kenai Peninsula North Fork field, company President Stephen Ratcliff told Petroleum News that Glacier's focus was on the North Slope, particularly on the Badami unit, and selling the Cook Inlet basin gas producing asset to Gardes Holdings helped provide needed capital.

But something was apparently amiss because on Nov. 16 BMO Capital Markets Energy Group put out a divesture notice announcing it had been retained by Glacier to represent the company in a sale of the Badami unit.

Savant Alaska, a Glacier company, restarted the eastern North Slope Badami pad in October. During the 24 days the field produced that month it yielded more than 2,000 barrels of oil a day, Ratcliff said in early November.

In its Badami asset overview, BMO said it was a turn-key, 100% operated, “cash flow positive asset … with significant exploration and exploitation potential from highly prolific stacked pay reservoirs,” producing ~2,000 barrels of oil per day, primarily from the Badami and Killian sands.

BMO said the “Hilcorp/BP retention of ARO and select plugging obligations limits buyer exposure,” noting the Killian sands are “primed for development following” its successful B1-07 well.

BMO also said Badami has produced more than 700 million barrels of oil since 2018 and “is currently making 1,250 barrels of oil per day,” with no explanation of the discrepancy unless that’s what the field is producing in November.

In its asset overview, BMO also said a “75 mi seismic survey covers entire block and confirms subsurface model” and that the “existing Glacier-owned, BP-constructed infrastructure supports full field development and optionality for third party revenue/volumes.”

BMO pointed to Badami’s “38,500 bo/d facility with capacity for additional volumes on or offset the unit” and “multiple access points via barge landing and 5,500 ft airstrip.”

Another one of BMO’s bullet points was the “70 mbo/d capacity Nutaaq pipeline owned and operated by Glacier (12” diameter, 25 mile) that connects Point Thompson to Endicott.” Nutaaq is a common carrier line.

Questions were referred to Sandra Ramsey at Glacier via [email protected]

- KAY CASHMAN