North American explorer and producer 88 Energy has revealed deep-diving plans to chase up to 647 million barrels of Alaskan oil in six target zones after successfully drilling its Hickory-1 surface hole to a depth of 1088m.
The company has also installed casing and a blow-out prevention system at its site near Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay and will now proceed to the full depth of 3810m using the impressive Nordic Calista Rig-2.
Management says it expects the Hickory-1 well to initially intersect three conventional primary oil reservoir targets, known as SMD A, B and C. Then as drilling down the well progresses, it is expected to also encounter the SFS and BFF secondary oil reservoir targets at deeper levels. An even deeper tertiary target, identified as KUP, is to be drilled subject to time constraints in the field season in addition to technical borehole considerations.
Logging while drilling and mud logging during the next fortnight is aimed at providing an early indication of the prospectivity of the target zones. The company will then decide if conditions are suitable to proceed to the full permitted depth of 3810m, which would enable a reach into the tertiary oil target.
After plunging to the total depth, 88 Energy plans to run a sophisticated wireline logging program, which would include pressurised and non-pressurised side wall cores, triple-combination dielectric scanning and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging. These techniques provide information on the rock formation and fluids within it, outlining rapid detailed oil reservoir characterisation. The data will be supplemented by laboratory core analysis.
The wireline logging program is likely to take up to a week to complete. It is designed to gather data to optimise the planned Hickory-1 flow testing during the 2023-24 winter period.
Project Phoenix, where the Hickory-1 well is located, is 75 per cent-owned by 88 Energy and covers a vast 33,527 hectares on Alaska’s central north slope. The well is located on trend from recent oil discoveries by Pantheon Resources.
According to 88 Energy, independent mapping has demonstrated that the oil plays across top, slope and bottom-set sands, extending from the Pantheon ground into the Phoenix tenements.
In the third quarter of last year, independent consultant Lee Keeling and Associates concluded that 88 Energy held an estimated unrisked conventional total of 647 mean million barrels of prospective oil resources at Project Phoenix.
The company says the project has been significantly de-risked by a combination of the recent Pantheon drilling in addition to flow tests on its adjacent ground to the north, data from its Icewine-1 well logs and a modern 3D seismic data set.
The Phoenix project is close to existing infrastructure, including the Trans Alaska oil pipeline and Dalton Highway. Three-dimensional seismic studies, including Amplitude Versus Offset (AVO) analysis and seismic inversion, were used to optimise the drilling location of Hickory-1.
Hickory-1 sits on what the company describes as a “sweet spot of interpreted AVO anomalies”.
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By Terry Bates
