--UPDATE, ADDS SHARE PRICE DETAILS--
88 Energy (LON:88E) shares advanced on Thursday as investors look forward to the start of drilling next month at Project Icewine, on Alaska’s North Slope.
The company this morning revealed that a rig team has now been signed and the programme is on track to kick-off in October.
The upcoming Icewine #1 exploration well will be drilled by the ‘winterised’ Kuukpik Rig 5.
It is well suited to the job, 88 Energy highlighted, as it has previously been used at remote drilling locations in all areas of the Alaskan arctic; including the Barrow Gas Fields, Umiat, NPRA and an offshore ice island in the Beaufort Sea.
"With the spud date for Icewine #1 fast approaching, it is great to have finalised a rig contract with Kuukpik,” said managing director Dave Wall.
“We are now fully funded, with a rig. The last of the permits required are also falling into place such that spud of the well remains on track for mid October.”
The experience that the Kuukpik team brings to the project, over a decade working on the Slope, is a “significant bonus”, he added.
Icewine 1 will be drilled on a gravel pad, next to a highway just 39 miles from Deadhorse in Prudhoe Bay, which is where the rig is currently.
It is “logistically simpler" than most of the wells drilled by the team in recent times, Wall added.
88 Energy said it expects to make a further announcement in the near future, upon rig mobilisation.