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Accumulate permitting winter ice roads
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
Accumulate Energy Alaska, which is proposing to drill the Bravo 1 and Charlie 1 exploration wells on the North Slope this winter, has submitted a permit application for ice pad and ice road work to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Mining, Land and Water.
The wells are to be drilled from ice pads some 24 and 27 miles west of the Franklin Bluffs pad where the company has been drilling its Icewine wells, requiring a tundra winter ice road which would begin at milepost 386.5 of the Dalton Highway, the company told the division in a Sept. 29 application.
Accumulate said work would begin with pre-packing the main ice road and the two spurs, one to each of the wells. There will be an ice staging pad within a mile of the start of the ice road in addition to an ice pad at each well site; the ice pads will be 500 by 500 feet.
There are also two options for a possible 5,000-foot ice airstrip, which would be used to transport materials and change-out crews.
Ice road and pad construction would be subject to DNR’s opening criteria for winter tundra travel in the lower North Slope foothills, the company said, with pre-packing beginning in November.
Summer approved tundra vehicles would be used for pre-packing, and the ice roads and pads would be constructed only after the soil reaches a temperature of minus 5 C at a depth of 12 inches and 9 inches of snow has accumulated on the route. Accumulate said if snow cover does not reach 9 inches then ice chips will be used.
The company said details of ice road alignments and ice pad locations reflect fieldwork done in mid-August when a field team mapped routes and locations.
Multiyear program Accumulate said the Bravo 1 and Charlie 1 wells are part of a multiyear program beginning in the winter of 2017-18. The work planned includes testing and evaluating the Seabee formation for oil. Accumulate said the same target was found in surrounding exploration wells (Mastodon 6-3-9, Malguk and Smilodon are the nearest exploration wells shown on an Accumulate map of the project) and is on production at the Meltwater pool at the Kuparuk River unit some 20 miles to the north.
The company said Bravo and Charlie will be drilled to depths of about 11,000 feet true vertical “to test stacked conventional objectives” within the Seabee formation, using the Arctic Fox 1 or a similar mobile land drilling rig.
Lease awards Accumulate Energy Alaska is the operating subsidiary for Australia-based 88 Energy Ltd., which said in an Oct. 25 update that the joint venture of 88 Energy and Burgundy Xploration LLC have been awarded leases on which the companies were the successful bidders in the 2016 North Slope areawide oil and gas lease sale.
88 Energy said the joint venture now has some 460,000 gross acres, up from 350,000 acres, with 88 Energy’s net acreage position now some 286,000, up from some 260,000 acres.
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