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The Explorers 2024: Great Bear Pantheon exploring for now and for later
Joint venture working on Ahpun field now and appraising Kodiak for future Eric Lidji for Petroleum News
Great Bear Pantheon was the busiest explorer in Alaska last season, drilling four of the seven exploration wells completed on the North Slope during the 2022-2023 season: Alkaid No. 2 and an associated pilot hole, a pilot hole at its Talitha prospect, and the Theta West 1 exploration well -- all near the Dalton Highway, south of Prudhoe Bay.
The company also became a producer when it sold hydrocarbons produced during a production test at its Alkaid prospect and commissioned a modular production facility.
The joint venture holds a large swath of acreage on the North Slope, south of the Prudhoe Bay unit, straddling the Dalton Highway and the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. The acreage to the east is called the Ahpun project, while the acreage to the west is called the Kodiak project. This proximity to existing infrastructure has allowed the company to bypass some of the seasonal restrictions that complicate other North Slope resource projects.
The company is focusing on developing Ahpun in the near-term and appraising Kodiak in the near-term in preparation for future approval of development, expected in 2028.
In a statement released last March 2024, Pantheon said that initial modeling for a 10,000-foot lateral at Ahpun topset horizons supports "previously released analysis of (more than) 2 million barrels per well Estimated Ultimate Recovery and first year average production rate of 2,000 bpd of marketable liquids." The company expects to release full reports soon, although nothing was available as The Explorers went to press in April.
In the statement, the company said it was "currently preparing drilling plans for a Megrez-1 well into eastern Ahpun Topsets from alongside Dalton Highway using either an ice pad for winter drilling or rig mats for summer drilling, again subject to funding."
As part of its late March 2024 release, Pantheon said it was negotiating with the Alaska Gasline Development Corp. on a proposed agreement "to supply up to 500 million cubic feet per day of natural gas at exit of Ahpun gas plant at a base price not to exceed $1/ million British thermal unit, with a final price subject to negotiation, for up to 40 years. Targeting delivery of initial volumes in 2029, ramping up to full capacity by 2032."
History Great Bear Petroleum LLC arrived in Alaska in 2010 with an ambitious plan to bring Lower 48 style source rock development to the massive North Slope petroleum system.
Following several seasons of drilling and seismic activity, and evaluating findings, the company launched a new strategy in the 2015 exploration season: using cash flow from conventional production to help finance a future unconventional development program.
Great Bear later partnered with British independent Pantheon Resources plc to create the joint venture Great Bear Pantheon. The joint venture has been pursuing three closely related prospects in the central North Slope, south of Prudhoe Bay, near the Dalton Highway: Greater Alkaid, Talitha and Theta West. As part of efforts to streamline administrative burden, these have been consolidated into the Kodiak and Ahpun fields.
In the December 2023 annual state lease sale, Great Bear Pantheon submitted high bids for 66,240 acres near its leasehold, "securing what Pantheon believes to be some of the highest quality areas of the Kodiak and Ahpun Fields at the shallowest depths." The company currently holds some 193,000 contiguous acres across its Alaska leasehold.
Alkaid Great Bear drilled the Alkaid No. 1 well in early 2015. Through its Great Bear Pantheon joint venture, it returned to the prospect in early 2019, re-entering the well to flow test it. Following the campaign, the company combined Alkaid with the nearby Phecda prospect into a single project, which became known as the Greater Alkaid prospect.
Great Bear Pantheon at one point planned to bring the field online as early as summer 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent crash in global oil prices squashed those plans. The joint venture returned in July 2022 with the Alkaid No. 2 well, a horizontal appraisal well designed for a long-term production test of relevant zones.
After partially resolving a blocked lateral, Great Bear Pantheon brought Alkaid No. 2 online in December 2022 at more than 500 barrels per day--including some 200 barrels of oil along with some natural gas liquids, condensate, and associated natural gas. The well sits on ADL 391706, approximately 16 miles southwest of the Deadhorse airport.
By January 2023, Great Bear Pantheon had sold more than 7,000 barrels to the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. The company estimated at the time it was realizing prices at 80-90% of Alaska North Slope crude oil or higher, based on the quality of its product.
The company initially trucked oil the market but later commissioned a modular Early Production Unit facility, allowing the company to shift to production, as needed.
Toward the end of 2023, Great Bear Pantheon re-entered Alkaid No. 2 well. The project was designed "to gather the best possible reservoir fluid samples for pressure-volume temperature, or PVT, analysis; to determine initial reservoir pressure; and to test the improvements in the frack design discussed in recent Pantheon webinars."
Talitha The Talitha A well from 2021 encountered five oil horizons. A flow test the following year plugged the deep Kuparuk and tested the remaining zones. The well averaged 73 barrels of oil per day over a three-day period and some 40 barrels per day sustained on the final day of testing. The testing also confirmed deliverability, with the high-quality light oil moving easily through the vertical well, boding well for future horizontal wells.
Early on, Great Bear Pantheon described Talitha A as a re-drill of ARCO's 1986 well Pipeline State No. 1 but with the benefit of four decades of improved knowledge.
The company proposed but ultimately never pursued a roughly 9,800-foot vertical Talitha B well to the base of the Brookian sand, just above the HRZ interval, in early 2023.
Theta West Following its 2022 season, Great Bear Pantheon commissioned contingent resource reports of the Alkaid and Theta West projects from Netherland Sewell and Associates.
The company released the Theta West report in mid-2023, confirming estimates of 962 million barrels of oil for the Lower Basin Floor Fan reservoir of the Kodiak field.
Great Bear Pantheon drilled the 8,450-foot vertical Theta West No. 1 well in the central North Slope in late January 2022 using Nordic Calista Rig 3. It was a step out from Talitha A, 10.5 miles away, and it was intended to confirm oil quality, oil movability and reservoir deliverability in preparation for a future horizontal production well.
In late March 2022, the company announced that the well had produced an average of 57 barrels of high quality light oil per day with a peak rate exceeding 100 barrels per day.
The well also helped define the aerial extent of the discovery, which the company says extends all the way to ARCO's Pipeline State No. 1 well drilled in the late 1980s.
Theta West was a top discovery worldwide in 2022, according to Wood Mackenzie. "In fact, it was the largest onshore discovery last year," Pantheon CEO Jay Cheatham said in June 2023. "It was in the top five, but the largest onshore and the only one in a tax royalty regime; all the others are in deep water production sharing contracts offshore."
Before the release of the resource estimate, Pantheon acquired additional acreage due north of its acreage -- a long vertical strip the company has described as a "chimney."
"We need to drill a well in that (additional acreage), subject to funding of course," Cheatham said in June 2023. "We've got certainly an upgrade in our resource from that acreage; we won't say a whole lot about that until Netherland and Sewell have completed their report, but it's got billions of barrels of oil in place and in that chimney area."
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