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Trading Bay Energy’s inlet prospects return to market, exclusive agreement ends
Steve Sutherlin, PNA managing editor
Recently Trading Bay Energy Corp. and its owner Paul L. Craig reached the end of an exclusive option agreement with an unnamed company for the sale of the company’s Hanna and Marie prospects in Cook Inlet, Craig told PNA Dec. 16.
What it means for Trading Bay is that it is free to talk with some other parties that have expressed an interest in the prospects, Craig said. The party that held the option on the prospects is still in the running, Craig said, adding that the name of the company, like other proprietary information, is confidential. For a closely held company like Trading Bay, names and numbers are held close to the chest.
Earlier in 2002, Trading Bay entered into an agreement to sell the Hanna and Marie prospects to U.S. Petroleum Corp. of Vancouver, British Columbia, but in September, just before closing, U.S. Petroleum pulled out of the deal, according to Craig.
Craig thinks Hanna and Marie are extremely prospective. The prospects are the remaining two of “three sisters of Cook Inlet,” prospects Craig named after his three daughters Hanna, Marie and Heather. Craig said he is under no particular pressure to drill or make a deal on the Hanna and Marie prospects. The options on the table include Trading Bay drilling the prospects using its own resources.
“There is no fuse burning that I have to rush into anything,” Craig said.
Three sisters still Hanna and Marie, near the pretty Creek and the Beluga River units, are natural gas prospects, and both have deep oil plays, Craig told PNA, but the third sister, Heather, on the other side of the inlet from Hanna and Marie in the Calm Gulch block of the Ninilchik unit — is still having an effect on her sisters. Although Heather has been spoken for, Craig still holds a working interest. He is watching the progress of Marathon Oil Co. on its Abalone well in the same block, scheduled to spud in 2003. Craig said he expected to know if the project is economic as early as 2005.
“The Heather prospect has a bearing on what my asset base may be as I move forward on Hanna and Marie,” he said.
On the other hand, Craig isn’t married to any of the options for the Hanna and Marie prospects. He will listen to any offer that would get drilling on the prospects started earlier, he said.
Craig’s Trading Bay Energy will need retooling before it becomes a Cook Inlet operator, Craig said. So while the Hanna and Marie prospects won’t go for fire sale prices, Craig is still a reasonably motivated seller, he said.
“There are lots and lots of bridges to cross.”
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