Pantheon Resources PLC (AIM:PANR, OTC:PTHRF) said it is keen to start horizontal production testing of its Alaska North Slope in the summer after extreme weather had hampered operations recently.
Jay Cheatham, Pantheon’s chief executive, said the plan remains to drill a new well, Alkaid#2, from a gravel pad along the Dalton Highway, the main road in Alaska, with spudding scheduled for July.
“You have so many advantages when you can drill in summer. You don't have to winterize everything you don't have these weather events that we've had three or four of this winter that have shut down our operations,” he said in an interview with Proactive.
“It's much less expensive,” he added, noting that this will be “Our first production test well, so this will be a horizontal well into the Alkaid structure.
“We will put it on a long-term test and we will truck the oil up the Dalton Highway and we will be able to sell it and put it into the Trans-Alaska pipeline system.
“It'll be a real bellwether for Pantheon to do that. It will also be a proof of concept” as there is "so much more data generated from a horizontal well", Cheatham added.
So far, Pantheon has vertically drilled two wells at Talitha and Theta West, though testing at both has been hampered by the weather.
Cheatham said the plan at Talitha now is likely to be a sidetrack next winter when it can go back to the shelf margin and see if there is a whole clean reservoir that can be tested.
At Theta West, flows were 57 barrels of oil per day recently and it “looked good”.
“We know now that we have a huge accumulation that extends from Talitha to Theta West. It’s a massive discovery of light oil.”
Cheatham added that the recent disappointment from 88 Energy in Alaska at its Merlin-2 well had no impact at all on Pantheon.
“It's zero impact on us. It's 76 miles away from our Theta West location and 90 miles from the Dalton Highway. We're 15-17 miles from the Dalton Highway.”
Pantheon shares eased 2% today to 119.4p valuing the oiler at just over £900mln.