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THE INDEPENDENTS: Two taken, one inlet sister available Trading Bay has sold Heather, has a deal on Marie, has Hanna, NPR-A leases up for grabs Kay Cashman Petroleum News
There are several companies that fall closer to the category of land speculator than that of an independent oil and gas company. Some have drilled wells in Alaska in the past but have no current plans to drill; others have aspired to be operators or working interest owners in exploration or development projects, but their aspiration has never come to fruition.
Petroleum News elected not to include most of these companies in this year’s edition of The Independents, with the exception of Lapp Resources on Page 95 and Trading Bay Energy, which has leases in two of the state’s hottest drilling regions — west Cook Inlet and National Petroleum Reserve- Alaska.
Anchorage-based Trading Bay has built up an acreage position of approximately 20,000 acres in Alaska, Paul Craig, the company’s founder and only shareholder, said in October.
“I’ve learned a lot in the past decade. I don’t feel as much of a need to have an operating company. … It’s possible Trading Bay will become an operating company in the future … but I would be happy if a company like Pelican Hill … participates on one or more of my prospects. At this point, I am comfortable taking a working interest or royalty position,” Craig said, whose primary concern is getting all of his prospects drilled.
Trading Bay has spent much of the last 10 years promoting three Cook Inlet prospects named for Craig’s daughters — Hanna, Marie and Heather — which he refers to as the “three sisters of Cook Inlet.”
West Cook Inlet prospects Hanna and Marie, near the Pretty Creek and Beluga River units, are gas prospects and have deep oil plays, Craig said.
The third sister, Heather, is on the other side of the inlet on the Kenai Peninsula north of, and adjacent to, Falls Creek. Heather is a 1961 gas discovery that has never been produced. It is currently in the Clam Gulch block of the Marathon Oil-operated Ninilchik unit.
Craig said he has an option to take a 10 percent working interest in any well drilled on the Heather prospect or in any unit formed that includes the prospect, but he said Marathon and its partners in the Ninilchik unit dispute that claim. A lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court.
“The Heather prospect has a bearing on what my asset base may be as I move forward on Hanna and Marie,” he said.
Pelican Hill to drill Marie The 1,156-acre Marie prospect is on the northwest boundary of the Beluga River gas field. The 7,040-acre Hanna prospect is adjacent to the Pretty Creek unit to the south, the Lewis River unit to the north and the Ivan River unit to the east.
In October 2002, Craig said he was looking for investors to purchase outright or to capitalize Trading Bay to fund drilling Marie and Hanna.
A well was drilled on the Marie prospect in the 1970s, but with gas prices at just 50 cents per thousand cubic feet, 150 feet of gas-charged sands indicated on well logs were never tested, Craig said.
“Pelican Hill has signed an agreement to drill the North Beluga prospect — what Trading Bay was calling the Marie prospect — by Dec. 31.”
Hanna available The Hanna prospect to the north, consisting of five leases, “remains open, there’s no formal commitment in place,” Craig said. “I’ve had discussions with various parties. Given the gas marketplace I think I was 10 years too early.”
Unocal planned a well on the Hanna prospect in 1983, but the crash in oil prices squelched it, Craig said.
Seismic shot over the area suggests good structure, possibly an extension of the Petty Creek and Lewis river formations, he said. In literature promoting the sale of its inlet properties in the late 1990s, Craig said, Unocal touted Hanna as a 50 to 100-million barrel prospect.
Trading Bay enters NPR-A On June 3, 2002, Craig and sometime bidding partner Peter S. Zamarello won Umiat tract L-006 in the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska oil and gas lease sale.
Craig and Zamarello outbid adjacent leaseholder Arctic Falcon Exploration. (See story on Arctic Falcon in the 2002 edition of The Independents.)
The one-half township lease is right on the crest of the Umiat anticline, Craig said, just north of Arctic Falcon’s acreage.
He said three wells on the lease drilled by Husky Oil had oil shows, but those wells were not deep enough to tap structures that geophysical analysis suggests might lie under the area.
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