Canol and Bluefish Shale Oil Plays
In a news release dated May 22, 2015 the National Energy Board ("NEB") and the Northwest Territories Geological Survey ("NTGS") released a joint Assessment of Unconventional Petroleum Resources of the Bluefish Shale and the Canol Shale in the Northwest Territories. This is the first time the unconventional resource potential of these shale's has been evaluated.
The news release can be summarized as follows "The volume of oil-in-place for the Canol Shale is estimated to be 145 billion barrels; the thinner Bluefish Shale is expected to contain 46 billion barrels of oil-in-place". A copy of the NEB news release and the joint assessment report is provide in the
Industry News - NWT section in our website.
In the last two land sales fourteen exploration licenses were granted for a total of $627 million in work-bid commitments. Exploration licenses were acquired by Conoco Phillips, ExxonMobil, Imperial, Husky, MGM Energy, Shell Oil and IFR.
The target of the most recent drilling programs in the CMV is the Canol shale, which is the source rock for the Norman Wells oilfield as well as our Summit Creek project. The Canol has similar rock properties to large-scale developments such as Barnett, Bakken, Eagle Ford and Muskwa. The Bakken shale development, in North Dakota, is estimated to be able to produce 6 billion barrels of oil equivalent or 10 years worth of oil consumption in Canada.*
* Financial Post September 2013
To date there have been five vertical stratigraphic pilot wells drilled on the Canol shale play, ConocoPhillips Canada two wells, Husky Oil Operations Ltd two wells and Shell Oil/MGM Energy one well. In the 2012/2013 winter drilling season ConocoPhillips drilled two horizontal-fracture-stimulated wells on EL-470, the wells were the first horizontal-fracture-stimulated wells that evaluated the Canol Shale, both wells are on confidential status.
In 2014 we commissioned a 51-101 compliant petro-physical report on the Bluefish and Canol shale's. The report evaluated wells that IFR participated in and two recent wells Husky drilled to evaluate the Canol. The preliminary contingent undiscovered resource estimates (oil-initially-in-place) for the Canol are 120 million barrels per 640 acres and 40 million barrels for the Bluefish per 640 acres.
IFR holds an interest in 223,064 gross acres, 174,614 net acres in the CMV.
Our goal in the CMV is to:
- Maintain our existing acreage
- Re-enter one of our existing wells to test the Canol & Bluefish shale's
- Drill an exploration well on EL-495 before the license expires in 2019
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