London-based Pantheon Resources Plc, which acquired the North Slope assets of Great Bear Petroleum in January, released an investor update that confirms the independent is preparing to begin phased production from its new Brookian light oil discovery south of Prudhoe Bay in mid-2020, provided it can find a partner to help fund the development.
The AIM-listed oil and gas explorer, which holds between 75% and 90% working interests in some 200,000 acres on the Slope, formed an Alaska affiliate, Pantheon Alaska Petroleum Operating LLC, with an office in Anchorage. That affiliate is headed by Patrick Galvin, chief commercial officer and general counsel, who worked in the same capacity for Great Bear Petroleum, and who is a former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Revenue, former petroleum land manager for the Alaska Department of Natural Resources and was a partner at K&L Gates in Anchorage.
Pantheon says the Alkaid/Phecda phased production project is subject to completion of a successful farmout, noting there are 1.8 billion barrels of discovered oil in place at Alkaid/Phecda and the company’s nearby Talitha prospect with recoverable estimates at 180 million to 270 million barrels of oil. Both prospects adjoin the trans-Alaska oil pipeline and the Dalton Highway.
At Alkaid/Phecda, which is a confirmed discovery, Pantheon estimates there is 900 million barrels of oil in place and 90-135 million barrels of P50 technically recoverable 35-plus degree API oil.
Alkaid drilling
Alkaid No. 1 was flow tested in March by Pantheon. The company combined Alkaid with the neighboring Phecda prospect after 3D seismic and re-mapping showed they were part of the same Brookian structural accumulation.
Great Bear drilled the Alkaid well in 2015 as a vertical test well but was unable to conduct flow testing because the drilling program was cut short by flooding on the highway. The well was suspended to avoid equipment being stranded at the location. All zones had been logged and sidewall cores had been taken at the deepest zones, confirming indications of oil in three major zones, from some 4,000 to 8,100 feet.
Great Bear had previously carried out an extensive program of 3D seismic surveying on the acreage and had identified several oil prospects, including Alkaid. The subsequent suspension of payments of state exploration tax credits under the administration of former Gov. Bill Walker - an action that hit small independents such as Great Bear particularly hard - resulted in a pause in the company’s exploration program.
Meanwhile the Alkaid well was suspended.
Re-entry, development
The 2019 re-entry of Alkaid No. 1 resulted in a better than expected well test, with a flow of 100 barrels of oil per day from a 6-foot vertical perforated interval through the reservoir, Pantheon says. No oil or water contact was found.
Horizontal wells will be used in field development, enabling much higher flow rates, Pantheon says.
The main zone of interest in the Brookian is estimated to have 240 feet of net pay within 450 feet of reservoir rock.
“Such flow rates are considered to be an excellent result and indicate the potential for materially higher flow rates when wells are drilled in the typical manner for Brookian wells in Alaska - horizontally, stimulated and with larger intervals perforated,” Pantheon said in a March 24 statement.
Testing of two secondary targets in Alkaid No. 1 at shallower depths did not prove successful.
In a June 6 press release and webcast, Pantheon said it would use mobile production units to handle output from three or four delineation wells adjacent to the Dalton in the highway’s already established transportation corridor, trucking the oil north to Pump Station No. 1 of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline until full-scale development of approximately 50 wells and related infrastructure with a central processing facility could be completed.
Pantheon expects the year-round operation of these three or four wells will each produce about 1,500 barrels of oil per day.
Talitha plans
In its Sept. 24 update, a Pantheon slide gave a brief overview of the Talitha prospect, where the Pipeline State No. 1 well was drilled by ARCO in 1988.
ARCO found interbedded sand/shales. The well was drilled in a lower oil price environment and the trans-Alaska oil pipeline was running at capacity, so ARCO did not further explore the area.
“Modern drilling practices vastly improve project economics,” Pantheon says, and would like to drill a new well at Talitha in 2020.
The eastern part of Talitha can be developed from the Dalton, which means a discovery could be “rapidly placed into production.”
“Geophysics accuracy at Alkaid increases confidence” in Talitha, Pantheon says.
