|
Great Bear buys into Badami with small ASRC working interest
Great Bear Petroleum has agreed to purchase a small working interest in Badami from Arctic Slope Regional Corp. Exploration’s position in the unit, Patrick Galvin, Great Bear chief commercial officer and general counsel, confirmed to Petroleum News in an Aug. 23 email. Information about the details of the purchase is not available, pending approval by the Alaska Department Natural Resources of the new lease assignments. However, Galvin commented that the purchase does not include any portion of the Badami oil sales pipeline.
Currently ASRC Exploration holds a 32.5 percent interest in the unit, with Savant Alaska, the Badami field operator, owning 67.5 percent. Savant is a subsidiary of Glacier Oil & Gas Corp., the company which also owns Cook Inlet Energy, the Cook Inlet oil and gas producer. Glacier Oil & Gas is the rejigged Miller Energy Resources, following Miller Energy’s emergence from bankruptcy.
The purchase of interests in an operating oil field appears something of a change of tactic for Great Bear - hitherto the company has only been involved in the exploration and appraisal of conventional and unconventional oil prospects in the company’s state leases to the south of the Prudhoe Bay area.
Online in 1998 BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. brought the Badami field, to the east of the central North Slope, on line in August 1998. Conoco Inc. had discovered the field in 1990.
But complex geology involving the compartmentalization of the oil reservoir into multiple, discrete sand bodies has rendered the field very difficult to develop. Oil production declined severely quite early in field life - BP suspended production on three occasions, with the second suspension lasting for two years. Field suspension allowed the reservoir pressure to recharge, as subsurface oil slowly migrated between the various sand units.
In mid-2008 BP came to an agreement with Savant Alaska and ASRC Exploration, to give those two companies a stake in the field in return for bringing the field back into production. Production did restart, albeit at a low level. Savant and ASRC Exploration acquired the field outright in early 2012, subsequently acquiring the Badami Pipeline system in early 2014. Miller Energy closed on the purchase of Savant in December 2014.
Deferred development But economic challenges resulting from the fall in the price of oil have resulted in the deferral of some planned field development. Savant had intended to evaluate the hydraulic fracture stimulation of two wells before drilling two further wells in the first half of 2015. However, problems in moving the necessary equipment to the field in time for the drilling activities, coupled with the company ownership change and the oil price situation, resulted in deferral of the work. And during 2015 Miller Energy expressed an interest in selling its Badami interests to improve its financial situation.
Meanwhile, a well workover of two wells in November 2015 did have a significant impact on field oil production.
In terms of exploration at Badami, in 2008 Savant started drilling the Red Wolf well in the unit, seeking a new oil pool in deeper and older strata than those of the producing field. In 2010 the company announced that the well, then called the B1-38 well, had encountered producible oil in a secondary target in the Cretaceous Killian sands. Apparently the well also encountered oil in the deeper horizon that the well had targeted. In 2012 Savant drilled a second Red Dog well, but this turned out to be a dry hole.
- ALAN BAILEY
|
