www.AlaskaAlliance.com 35 Six test wells will be drilled during next two years Explorer Bill Armstrong — who led the discovery of several North Slope oil finds including Pikka — is leading an aggressive exploration plan to drill six test wells over two years, or three wells per year, east of Prudhoe Bay and near the existing small Badami oil field. The plan is to use the Doyon 141 rig to drill one well, King Steet No. 1, while the Nabors 105 rig will drill the two others, Voodoo-1 and Sockeye-1. Armstrong-affiliated Lagniappe Alaska LLC will be operator of the program with participation by Apache Corp. The re-entry of Apache to Alaska is significant. The company, a major independent, was active in Cook Inlet in recent years where it conducted a major exploration program. The effort was unsuccessful, but Apache has also long been interested in the North Slope. “We’ve got a proven operator (Armstrong) in state lands, (and) very, very prospective acreage,” said John Christmann, Apache’s CEO, on a recent earnings call. Alaska “fits our exploration strategy,” he said. Lagniappe has meanwhile received its state permits to begin other work on 270,000 acres in 148 leases controlled by the company Apache, its partner. Santos Ltd. previously held the leases but has “farmed out” 75 percent of its interest to Armstrong and Apache. This leaves Santos still holding 25 percent. The program will add substantially to winter work planned by Santos at Pikka and by ConocoPhillips at Willow. Each rig will need an ice road, camp and support for the supply of fuel, materials for drilling fluids and other needs. Forty-four miles of ice road construction is needed along with an ice bridge over the Sagavanirktok River, according to documents filed by Lagniappe with the state Department of Natural Resources. Armstrong has high hopes for the area, including the possibility of finding large accumulations like Pikka and Willow. The area is considered underexplored in previous initiatives by other companies. Most of the industry’s exploration focus in recent years has been west of Prudhoe Bay in areas near the Colville River where Pikka and other discoveries have been made and further west in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska where the Willow find was made as well as the smaller GMT-1 and GMT-1 projects, which are now producing. The region east of Prudhoe toward the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has only been lightly explored except along the Beaufort Sea coast where the small Badami oil field was found and Point Thomson, a large natural gas and condensate field as well as Sourdough, an oil deposit virtually on the ANWR border. A big advantage for any new discoveries by Lagniappe is the existing pipeline from Point Thomson to the east of Badami, to Prudhoe Bay and the Trans Alaska Pipeline System further west. The Badami field is producing much less than was expected, so there is capacity for new oil that Lagniappe might discover. There is also an oil and gas processing facility at Badami that is also underused, and with spare capacity, so new oil discovered might also be processed there. Living quarters, an airstrip and other support facilities have also been built at Badami. — Tim Bradner The region east of Prudhoe Bay toward the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has only been lightly explored. Photos Courtesy Gaylynn Mertz
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