On Sept. 30 Mustang Holding LLC filed the ninth plan of development and annual report for the Mustang oil field with Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas. Its near-term plan is to keep the project in its current cold shutdown status, which includes protecting “surface equipment, wellbores, pipelines, roadways, well pads, and any and all related equipment and infrastructure.”
Mustang is in the central North Slope’s Southern Miluveach unit, or SMU, which has five state of Alaska leases totaling 8,960 acres. The Mustang Pad is adjacent to the southwest edge of the Kuparuk River unit.
The tiny oil field is operated by Mustang Holding on behalf of the working interest owners: Mustang Holding LLC (90.1%), Nabors Drilling Technologies USA Inc., and AVCG LLC.
Mustang Holding, formed to hold the SMU assets, was named operator in December 2020 when the division approved a request from the working interest owners to appoint the holding company operator after Brooks Range Petroleum Corp. resigned as operator due to BRPC’s default on various financing agreements between it and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority.
The ninth POD period is Jan. 1, 2022, through Dec. 31, 2022.
Mustang sale expected
As reported in previous issues of Petroleum News on Aug. 12 AIDEA’s board passed a resolution to divest the “assets of, or the equity interests in, Mustang Holding” and to “commence a competitive sale process of the Mustang project.”
AIDEA chief investment officer for Mustang, Morgan Neff, is the main point of contact for the sale of, or the equity interests in, Mustang Holding.
In its ninth POD, the holding company said the following had been accomplished so far: “several” nondisclosure agreements have been executed with interested and qualified parties.
These parties have been granted access to the virtual data room, and the holding company has “via email, circulated a bid process letter to those interested and qualified parties.”
Long-range proposed development activities for the SMU, Mustang Holding told the division in its ninth POD, “pursuant to the expected transaction with a qualified party, is for the MHLLC (Mustang Holding LLC) successor provide to the Division an amendment to the 9th POD.”
The holding company “expects that the amendment will include, but not be limited to plans for delineation of the underlying oil or gas reservoir(s), to bring the reservoirs into production, and to maintain and enhance production once established.”
As part of its sales agreement, Mustang Holding “will also require its successor to apply to the Division for transfer of the MHLLC working interests in the SMU as well as provide notification regarding change of operatorship and assume any active permits and assume all bonding requirements.”
- KAY CASHMAN