88 Energy Ltd (AIM:88E, ASX:88E, OTC:EEENF) has told investors it expects to start drilling the Hickory-1 exploration well, within its Project Phoenix area, on or around 1 March this year.
The well, located in the area previously referred to by 88 Energy as ‘Icewine East’, is aimed at oil-bearing conventional reservoirs like those seen nearby by Pantheon Resources.
Hickory-1 will have multiple targets - a total of six across four reservoirs: SMD, SFS, BFF and Kuparuk - and is estimated overall to be testing some 647mln barrels of prospective barrels of oil resources.
88 Energy said it is on schedule to complete planning and permitting for the well by the end of January or shortly after, and it has already contracted the Nordic Calista Rig-2 for the drill programme.
The company, in today’s quarterly activities report to the ASX, said it had A$14.1mln of cash and no debt as of 31 December 2022.
It also detailed activities underway for what the company refers to as Project Leonis which is a portion of acreage picked up in last year’s Alaskan lease sale.
Leonis spans ten leases, for around 25,600 contiguous acres, and the company expects to receive approvals and formal award of the leases in the first half of 2023.
88 Energy noted that the Leonis area was covered by an existing 3D seismic data suite and is host to a historic well, Hemi Springs Unit 3 which was drilled in 1985 – data from that well shows some 200 feet of logged net pay in the Upper Schrader Bluff (USB) reservoir, and was noted to have good porosity and oil shows.
Elsewhere, at 88 Energy’s Project Londhorn - its production assets in Texas - the company noted the successful completion of its two final well workovers planned for 2022 and said that in December it received a quarterly cash flow distribution of A$1.5mln.