Pantheon secures Nabors rig for Megrez 1

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

Pantheon Resources plc said Aug. 12 that it has executed a contract for the Nabors 105AC drill rig which will be used to drill the Megrez 1 exploration well in the fourth quarter. The company said this is a rig it is familiar with as it has used it previously.

Great Bear Pantheon, which operates for Pantheon in Alaska, filed a unit plan of operations earlier in the summer to build the Megrez gravel pad and drill the exploration well at a site 700 feet west of the Dalton Highway in the Talitha unit, 25 miles south of Deadhorse.

Pantheon said the Megrez 1 exploration well will target the Ahpun East topset play.

Work at the gravel pad is expected to start in September and upon completion the rig will be mobilized to the site.

Pantheon said the well is estimated to have a 69% chance of geological success and said the topset sands in the Ahpun East project are estimated to contain 609 million barrels of marketable liquids and 3.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. "The Ahpun East topsets are significantly shallower than the Ahpun western topsets drilled previously," Pantheon said.

In its unit plan of operations Great Bear Pantheon said Megrez 1 will be highly deviated, targeting the base of the Ahpun East Topset sand at some 7,800 feet true vertical depth, with a measured depth of up to 13,500 feet.

Following analysis of logging while drilling data, Great Bear said it will select a test horizon and complete the well within the target horizon, "perhaps including a short horizontal section drilled through the target interval, and possibly hydraulic fracture stimulated."

The Megrez pad will include a satellite office camp with 11-bed capacity for the company man and alternate and sufficient for the entire crew to shelter in place in event of an emergency, along with storage areas and maintenance buildings. The crew will be housed in Deadhorse and shuttled to the well site.

--KRISTEN NELSON