Devon Canada Corp., a unit of Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy Corp., will spud the first well in 15 years in Canada's Beaufort Sea during the upcoming winter drilling season. The company has moved a steel-drilling caisson (SDC) into Beluga Bay, about 45 kilometers offshore the westerly outlet of the Mackenzie River, and set it in 13 meters of water. Once ice cover is solid and stable, Devon will begin drilling a 2,350-meter well on its Paktoa prospect. Devon owns a 100% interest in offshore Exploration License 420, which is divided into four blocks. The terms of the license require the company to drill successive blocks in successive years; Paktoa is the first obligation well on the license. If the weather cooperates, the well will spud in early December. The drilling must be timed so that the depth at which Devon could potentially hit sustainable hydrocarbons occurs when land-fast ice has formed. That's when the pressure ridges that form in the ice have built to the point that they are embedded in the sea floor, anchoring the ice. The Paktoa wildcat is estimated to cost C$58 million. The prospect will evaluate Taglu and Kugmallit sands around a shale diapir. Compared with previous rounds of exploration in the Beaufort, Devon has acquired a significant amount of 3-D seismic. "We can image the structures much more accurately than was possible in the past. We're targeting the onlapped sands on the flanks of the structures, instead of sands draped over the crests that were drilled previously," says Ian Freeland, Devon Canada's Beaufort Sea exploration coordinator. While the play concept is new for this area, the target reservoirs are well-known producers in the rest of basin. "We have the potential to find similar-sized reservoirs offshore that have been found onshore, and if we do, it adds to the critical mass for the development of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline." For more on this, see the December issue of Oil and Gas Investor. For a subscription, call 713-993-9320, ext. 126.