Accumulate sets Icewine appraisal

Accumulate Energy Alaska Inc. is planning a one-well appraisal program this winter.

The Houston-based subsidiary of Australian independent 88 Energy Ltd plans to drill the Icewine No. 2 appraisal well along the Dalton Highway transportation corridor.

The well would be located approximately 50 feet west of the Icewine No. 1 well that the company completed this past winter. The proposed 11,200-foot vertical well would target the HRZ Shale, one of the three stacked source rocks in the region. The company plans to conduct hydraulic fracture stimulation and flow-back testing of the HRZ Shale this year and could return as soon as the 2017-18 winter exploration season to either deepen the main well or to drill a sidetrack or a lateral from the wellbore into other targets. The company also plans to look at shallower secondary conventional targets with the well.

Accumulate Energy originally intended to design the well as a lateral but revised the program to a vertical well with multistage hydraulic fracturing to improve the economics.

The company plans to use the Franklin Bluffs pad for some staging activities during the program, including its 72-man camp to support drilling and testing work.

The Division of Oil and Gas is taking comments on the program through Nov. 25.

Accumulate Energy parent company 88 Energy and Burgundy Xploration Inc. formed a joint venture in November 2014 to explore the Icewine prospect and expanded their lease position to 271,119 acres in June 2016. The project is primarily targeting oil in the HRZ Shale, as well as conventional prospects identified through a 2-D seismic acquisition.

A preliminary mapping of about half of the seismic data identified some 20 conventional oil prospects in the Brookian sequence, according to 88 Energy. They estimated that five of those prospects might hold a combined mean volume of 758 million barrels of oil.

88 Energy recently announced plans to raise as much as A$11 million (approximately US$8.4 million) for the upcoming exploration program through a stock placement.

- ERIC LIDJI