London-based Pantheon Resources plc, the oil and gas company with a 100% working interest in the Kodiak and Ahpun projects that col-lectively span193,000 contiguous acres in close proximity to pipeline and transportation infrastructure on Alaska's North Slope, said Sept. 27 that operations for the re-entry at the Alkaid-2 well have com-menced.
(See map and charts in the online issue PDF)
The Alkaid 2 re-entry has three primary objectives:
1. to gather the best possible reservoir fluid samples for pressure-volume temperature, or PVT, analysis;
2. to determine initial reservoir pressure; and
3. test the improvements in the frack design discussed in recent Pan-theon webinars.
The objective of the operations at Alkaid 2 is not to target maximum flow rates. Pantheon's local operating subsidiary Great Bear Pantheon "will deliberately restrict the flow rates to minimize gas production into the well bore and allow optimum data collection."
Pantheon said Alkaid 2 well was positioned to target the Zone of In-terest, or ZOI, in the "optimum location and is on the edge of the mapped SMD reservoir. Notwithstanding the thinner SMD interval at this location when compared to the core of the Ahpun field, the well encountered encouraging hydrocarbon indications enroute to the deeper ZOI."
SMD stands for Shelf Margin Deltaic.
Other objectives
Other operational objectives, the company said in its Sept. 27 press release, are to make the well safe in preparation for operations, run a plug to isolate the Alkaid ZOI below the SMD horizon, and to "perfo-rate a limited section to ensure injection pressures are high enough to propagate the frac lobes horizontally as desired."
Also, to pump 11,000 barrels of water and 400,000 pounds of 100 mesh sand
Great Bear Pantheon will also flow back slowly to prevent or limit gas flashing in the reservoir (i.e. exsolving from solution in an uncon-trolled manner) in order to gather the most representative fluid sam-ples possible.
And finally, pressures throughout will be monitored to assess frack efficiency and original reservoir pressure.
"We are pleased that operations for the re-entry at Alkaid-2 have now begun. As stated, we are not targeting maximum flow rates, instead, this program is designed to allow for as much data gathering as pos-sible," Pantheon CEO Jay Cheatham said.
"Whilst the location of the Alkaid-2 well is not ideal for the shallow-er SMD horizon, the company was pleasantly surprised to have logged oil pay when drilling through the SMD enroute to the primary target, the ZOI. This has provided a low cost option to assess both the productivity of the shallower horizon and test our improved frac de-sign," Cheatham said.
Background
The Alkaid 2 well was drilled in 2022 and was positioned to priori-tize testing of the primary target, being the oil zone successfully flow tested in the re-entry of Alkaid 1 well in 2019. The main zone of in-terest, in the Brookian, was estimated to have 240 feet of net pay within 400 feet of reservoir rock.
Testing of the ZOI was compromised in Alkaid 2 as a result of well-bore blockages, necessitating a number of cleanout and other remedial operations. Ultimately, the ZOI produced an IP30 production rate of c.505 barrels per day of marketable liquid hydrocarbons consisting of oil, condensate and NGLs, as well as natural gas.
As previously announced, extensive analysis has been undertaken on the Alkaid 2 ZOI results "with the data supporting a commercial de-velopment based upon 10,000ft lateral development wells, a doubling of the frac efficiency to 40% and assuming no improvement in reser-voir quality. The data indicates that well productivity has the poten-tial to improve materially based upon better frac design," Pantheon said.
Tony Beilman, Pantheon's "recently appointed Senior VP of Engi-neering, and an expert in fracking in North America," believes that with "iterative optimization," Pantheon has the potential to meet typi-cal performance benchmarks, a 4x improvement upon that achieved in the ZOI.
One of the primary objectives of the upcoming Shelf Margin Deltaic test is to assess the efficacy of an updated frack design.
--KAY CASHMAN
