Fortune Hunt Alaska 2012: Coring likely completed at Alaska’s first shale oil test well

By the time Fortune Hunt Alaska goes to press at the end of July 2012, the first test well in Alaska to target source reservoired oil — called ‘shale oil’ because most source rocks are shale — will likely have been drilled and cored by Great Bear Petroleum and farm-in partner Halliburton.

Great Bear is pioneering the possibility of oil production on the North Slope using the hydraulic fracturing techniques that have proved successful in tight oil sands and source rocks elsewhere.

The 11,000-foot near vertical well, Alcor No. 1, targeted all three major North Slope source rocks, from deepest to shallowest: Shublik, lower Kingak, and an assemblage called the Hue shale and HRZ or GRZ.

Great Bear is sending core samples to laboratories for testing, to determine the production characteristics of the rocks.

After completing the vertical well at Alcor, Nabors rig 105AC will move south to drill a vertical hole at Merak, the next in a series of six drill sites south of the producing North Slope oil fields that Great Bear has staked along the Dalton Highway and the trans-Alaska oil pipeline corridor.

After taking core samples from Merak, Great Bear plans to proceed to the next stage of testing by drilling horizontal lateral wells from the vertical well bores.

The company wants to complete the two vertical wells and two horizontal wells, and drill another vertical well at a third site, Mizar, before the end of 2012.

— Kay Cashman