|
Greg Micallef and Warren Buck forming independent New firm to work in Cook Inlet; U.S. Petroleum picking up lease near Beluga Kristen Nelson Reprinted from The Independents
Gregory Micallef and Warren Buck are working on the business plan for a new company — working name Buck & Micallef Energy & Development — to drill Buck’s Cook Inlet state oil and gas leases, Micallef told Petroleum News Alaska Nov. 13.
Buck has five state oil and gas leases in the Cook Inlet Basin. Micallef said he’s been a consultant on the leases, and has an overriding interest in all of them. The new company will be headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
U.S. Petroleum Corp. of Vancouver, British Columbia, is in the process of acquiring one of the leases, 520 acres on the northeast boundary of the Beluga River gas field.
U.S. Petroleum said Oct. 16 that it had an agreement to buy 100 percent working interest in the lease from Buck, and said Sept. 19 that it had commissioned a report on the Buck lease from Erik Opstad. U.S. Petroleum said that Opstad, a state of Alaska certified professional geologist, said the 520-acre lease had potential reserves of 29.03 billion cubic feet of gas and 4.375 million barrels of oil.
Micallef said this lease has an existing well on it and is the best of the Buck prospects, although there are discussions with other companies about other leases.
Picking up where dad left off Buck’s father, Christian, who died some five years ago, was an oilman and one of Dan Donkel’s backers, Micallef said: “Warren Buck is now picking up where his dad left off.”
Micallef told PNA that he has been involved in the Alaska oil business since the early 1980s, acquiring state oil and gas lease acreage at sale 40 in September of 1983 and (as Micallef Energy & Development) partnering with Far North Oil & Gas to do some work at Sterling and Ninilchik. Micallef said he did an infrared study of the entire Cook Inlet in the mid 1980s, at a time when he had an interest in some 25,000 acres, a drilling rig and a gas sales contract to supply Anchorage.
In the mid-1980s Micallef said, he drilled a couple of dozen wells in the Lower 48 in Colorado, Kansas and Kentucky, but got out of the business when oil prices fell.
Lots of interest in Alaska There is now a lot of interest in Alaska among independents in the Lower 48, Micallef said, and he hopes to get a group of independents involved in the state.
Right now, he told PNA, he and Buck are working on a business plan, negotiating to bring a drilling rig to Alaska, and waiting for the deal with U.S. Petroleum to close.
Micallef said the closing is expected in about 10 days and, once that happens, U.S. Petroleum will initiate permitting.
U.S. Petroleum is a public company, trading on the U.S. over-the-counter market under the symbol USPT. In October the company said a gas well had been completed on an Oklahoma property and the remainder of that acreage farmed out with U.S. Petroleum retaining an overriding royalty interest.
| 