by ROCKMAN » Tue 14 Apr 2015, 08:17:07
News from Alaska: "Fracking takes place regularly on about 20 percent of CONVENTIONAL wells in Alaska, according to EnergyWire in January 2013. Alaska's North Slope region has been estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey to contain up to 2 billion barrels of oil and 80 trillion cubic feet of gas -- second in shale oil only to the Bakken formation in North Dakota. But the agency has admitted that the figures are uncertain, as the region's shale rock is untested. In 2012, the U.S. Geological Survey released an assessment estimating that Alaska’s North Slope shales may hold as much as 80 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, and as much as 2 billion barrels of tight oil. The report noted that high development costs and limited infrastructure have prevented companies from producing shale resources in Alaska, although Great Bear Petroleum, Halliburton, and Royale Energy began exploring for tight oil shortly after the 2012 assessment release, thanks in part to the state's exploration tax credits. Great Bear Petroleum bought 500,000 acres of northern Alaska state land in 2010, hoping to produce 200,000 barrels of crude per day by 2020 (as well as natural gas liquids), shipped via the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Fracking may begin in winter 2013. The gas resources, unlike the tight oil resources, will likely not be developed without a massive gas pipeline from the remote North Slope to transport it".
From their own website Great Bear may have a bit of difficulty hitting that 200,000 bopd target:
The 2012 wells, aimed at testing the shales, were drilled in the summer on gravel extensions built on the Dalton Highway, an all-year gravel road that extends south of Prudhoe Bay to Interior Alaska. That drilling was primarily to extract core samples from the shale for analysis, although the company hoped at the time to drill one horizontal segment for a production test. That was not done, however. Great Bear still considered the drilling successful because valuable data was obtained. “The samples met or exceeded our expectations in terms of organic compounds (of hydrocarbons) and the right thermal maturity, which meant the rocks were prone to the formation of oil rather than, say, for natural gas,” Galvin said. The 2012 well results also showed a substantial presence of conventional oil prospects on Great Bear’s leases, which has now been affirmed by 3-D seismic testing the company did in 2013 and 2014. This has caused Great Bear to shift its plan to focus first on conventional oil, the hopes being that this will help pay the costs for a long-term evaluation and development of the shale oil resource, Galvin said.
{So no meaningful amount of oil production yet but they have succeeded in getting some fundamental data. Data that apparently indicates to them that the Alaskan shales are off the table at the moment. And that was their conclusion before the oil price collapse}