CORRECTION: Clarification on Alkaid resources, reserves

The May 19 issue of Petroleum News carried a confusing and incorrect headline: "LKA confirms Ahpun's Alkaid resources, reserves at 79 mmbbl" due to the specific amount of space we're allowed in the design of our newspaper headlines and my eagerness to get the number 79 mmbbl in the headline.

The story was about Pantheon releasing the results of an updated independent expert report by Lee Keeling & Associates on the Alkaid horizon within the Ahpun field on Alaska's North Slope.

The headline confused the terms RESOURCE and RESERVES as commonly defined by SPE, AAPG and others. The Alkaid article headline summed up the 3P reserves (Reserves: Proven/Probable/Possible in declining order of certainty) of 5 million barrels with the CONTINGENT RESOURCE (potentially recoverable but not commercial) of 74 million barrels and called it all RESERVES of 79 MMBBL

Fortunately, in the article itself the categories were correctly identified.

My apologies for any confusion due to the headline. And my thanks to Gregory Wilson, commissioner with the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, for bringing this to my attention.

--KAY CASHMAN