88 Energy’s Charlie 1 well looking good

Kay Cashman

Petroleum News

Australia independent 88 Energy said March 31 that its Charlie 1 appraisal well reached total depth of 11,112 feet in the Kuparuk formation on March 30. The well, in the company’s central North Slope Icewine project, is operated by 88E subsidiary Accumulate Energy Alaska, which is run by geologist Erik Opstad, who has worked the Slope for more than 34 years.

Having drilled through and logged all seven targets, including the HRZ, 88E said logging while drilling results are “largely consistent” with BP’s 1991 Malguk 1 oil well.

With shows and elevated log response recorded over several horizons, the significance of the similarities and differences to Malguk 1 won’t be known until after wireline logging has been done and analysis completed.

Wireline logging is underway and will take about seven days. Flow testing is expected to conclude in April.

Charlie 1 was designed as a step out of Malguk 1, which encountered oil shows with elevated resistivity and mud gas readings over multiple horizons during drilling but was not tested due to complications resulting in a lack of time before the winter drilling season closed. It was drilled using 2D seismic, which was inadequate for determining the extent of any of the targets encountered, whereas Charlie 1 was drilled using 2018 3D seismic.

Per 88 Energy, the gross mean prospective resource across the seven stacked targets is 1.6 billion barrels of oil (480 million barrels net to 88E).

- KAY CASHMAN