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Toolik exploration plan revised with no 2024-25 drilling planned
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
When Accumulate Energy Alaska applied for the Toolik River unit in 2022 its exploration plan, approved by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources' Division of Oil and Gas in 2023, included drilling and non-drilling activities. The division said in its partial approval of the unit (it approved only the western 59,942 acres, excluding eastern tracts which would have brought the unit to 82,846 acres) that the company's plans included drilling the Hickory 1 well in the winter of 2022-23. Since the well was not spud until March, the division said it expected Accumulate to re-enter, hydraulically fracture and flow test the well in the winter of 2024.
This North Slope unit is south of Great Bear Pantheon's Alkaid and Talitha units, straddling the trans-Alaska oil pipeline and the Dalton Highway south of Prudhoe Bay.
Then in the summer of 2024, the division said, Accumulate would flow test Icewine 1 -- after determining if that well could be safely re-entered. Icewine 1 was drilled in 2015-16.
In its exploration plan, Accumulate said that upon successful flow tests from Hickory 1 and re-entered Icewine 1, together with other lease owners it would access the commerciality of the Toolik unit and "potential drilling of a further well, which will be a long horizontal well that is multi-stage fracture stimulated to be conducted in the 2025 season."
The division said non-drilling activities were to include interpretation of the Franklin Bluffs 3D seismic and 2D seismic acquisition over Accumulate's Eastern leases (excluded from the approved TRU area), with 2D seismic acquisition dependent on successful flow tests.
Further drilling on hold In a June 11 updated plan of Toolik River unit exploration, including a 2023-24 annual report and summary, Accumulate did not mention the Icewine 1.
It said Hickory 1 was re-entered and successfully perforated and hydraulically fractured, then plugged and abandoned.
No drilling is planned for 2024-25.
Instead, Accumulate said it would analyze samples and data from the 2023-24 Hickory 1 well work and commission an independent contingent resource report followed by "a targeted farmout process" to facilitate drilling in the 2025-26 season, with as many as four horizontal wells off the Franklin Bluffs pad and construction of a modular processing facility, along with a further vertical appraisal well to delineate southern acreage in the Icewine and Franklin Bluffs well area.
The planned 2D on the eastern leases will not take place.
Accumulate said after discussions with its board, it is likely the eastern leases not approved as part of the unit will be relinquished.
--KRISTEN NELSON
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