Today, 88 Energy (88E ) has confirmed that light oil has been recovered during two separate production tests at Pantheon Resources’ Talitha-A well, located just 2.8 miles north of the Project Icewine permit boundary in Alaska, in which 88 Energy holds a 75% working interest.
Pantheon drilled the Talitha-A well in Q121. Formerly suspended following a production test, its intention was to return to test additional targets, namely the Basin Floor Fan (BFF), the Slope Fan System (SFS) and the Shelf Margin Deltaic (SMD), during the 2022 drilling season.
Earlier this year, it re-entered the well to individually test the BFF target and the SFS target which resulted in the sustained recovery of light oil over a three-day period from each test. All targets are interpreted by the Company to extend into 88 Energy’s Project Icewine acreage.
88E explained to investors that the Seabee Formation, of which Pantheon’s Basin Floor Fan is a member, is the same formation that host’s 88 Energy’s Lima complex. The Lima complex was a secondary target in the Charlie-1 discovery well drilled at Project Icewine in 1Q20.
The results of Pantheon’s Talitha-A well, combined with its earlier Alkaid-1 (2019) well, have now been considered as part of a re-evaluation of 88 Energy’s Icewine-1 well data, it noted.
Today, the company confirmed that subsequent and independent comparisons of the sequence that was tested and flowed light oil in Alkaid-1 against its equivalent in the Icewine-1 well have revealed the porosity and resistivity of the Icewine-1 well to be significant.
88 Energy said just a small 6 ft zone in Alkaid-1 tested at “80-100 BOPD of 40° API gravity oil” from an “estimated 240 ft of net pay” in Alkaid-1, as unveiled by Pantheon in March 2019.
Following the results from Talitha-A in 2021 and further recent testing results by Pantheon in 2022, 88 Energy will now incorporate these results into an independent prospective resource report for the Alaskan Project Icewine focusing on the eastern leases in the first half of 2022.
Project Icewine, which is located on the central North Slope of Alaska and encompasses approximately 195,000 acres, is situated on-trend to recent discoveries in multiple, newly successful play types in topset and bottom-set sands of the Schrader Bluff and Seabee formations. The exploration firm 88 Energy holds a 75% working interest in the Project.
Earlier this week, 88 Energy confirmed to investors that the mobilisation of the Arctic Fox rig to its Merlin-2 appraisal well drilling location had been completed ahead of its upcoming spud.
In a statement released today, 88 Energy said pre-spud operations are continuing and now entering the final phase ahead of the Merlin-2 spud date which is scheduled for the week commencing 7 March 2022, with the well permitted to a Total Depth (TD) of 8,000 feet.
The Merlin-2 appraisal well located on Alaska’s North Slope is planned to be initially drilled to 2,000 feet, with the surface casing then installed and the Blowout Preventer system tested.
This is anticipated to collectively take around one week and drilling to TD is then expected to take a further four weeks, including wireline logging. A production test program for the well has been designed and equipment placed on standby during initial well site operations.
The drilling of the Merlin-2 well, located at 88E’s 100% owned Project Peregrine in the NPR-A region of the North Slope of Alaska, follows the successful drilling of the Merlin-1 well in 2021.
In addition, 88 Energy has also been actively assessing “multiple new venture opportunities” across the asset life cycle to expand the company’s portfolio of assets and opportunity types.
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