88 Energy's (LON:88E) busy week continues with the company announcing that drilling started on the Icewine Number 1 exploration well in Alaska yesterday.
Spudding of the maiden exploration well on the company's Project Icewine acreage, onshore Alaska, took place at 5.45pm on Thursday, local time.
The plan is to drill to a total depth of 11,600 feet and drilling is scheduled to take 30 days.
The primary objective of the well is the HRZ shale formation targeting a huge unconventional resource prize, 88E said.
In a call for patience, 88E said that while some data will be available immediately after drilling, the definitive testing of the HRZ shale potential will take several months of data analysis.
The pivotal focus will be an extensive evaluation of core material by specialist laboratories, which will cover a number of parameters considered critical for the success of the play.
Conventional potential may also exist in shallower (Brookian) and deeper (Kuparuk) horizons and the well has been designed such that testing of these horizons is possible, if warranted, 88E added.
The drilling of Icewine #1 will deliver first insight to the conventional prospectivity of 88 Energy's acreage to be “matured up” by the potential acquisition of 3D seismic in the near term.
“Spud at Icewine #1 is a momentous occasion for 88 Energy and its shareholders, without whose support the well would not have been funded,” said Dave Wall, managing director of 88 Energy Limited.
Project Icewine is estimated as having an unconventional prospective resource (gross un-risked mean) of 492mln barrels (mmbbls) of oil.
With a probability of geological success of 41%, the risked mean prospective resource is 200mmbbls (gross).