It will have been almost a month since the most recent Alberta Crown Land Sale (which fetched $29 MM) by the time the next land sale goes ahead on March 6th, 2024.
While there will no doubt be lots of interesting activity, one particular area caught our attention because of the large and contiguous nature of the mineral rights that have been posted, as well as its reasonable proximity to the impressive Marten Hills Clearwater development. 85 sections (21,760 hectares) of mineral rights have been posted on the northeastern side of the Marten Hills field. These postings are pictured in yellow in Figure 1. The mineral rights are broken into three separate parcels, all with zones listed as “oil sands below the top of the Viking formation to the base of the Woodbend group.” Given the geography and zone description, it’s likely that the Clearwater is the potential target here.
We drew an arbitrary polygon around these land postings to get a sense of any interesting activity in the area ahead of this land sale. Over the last year, there have been 27 spuds within this area (pictured in red in Figure 1) with all but one targeting the Clearwater (the other a Grand Rapids well). 17 of those spuds were by Tamarack Valley (south of the postings), while 10 were by Spur Petroleum (northwest of the postings). For the most part though, the area covering these lands is largely untested with basically no recent spuds within a township of these postings.
While well activity in the defined area has been sparse, there have been 11 different parcels of mineral rights bought in Alberta Crown land sales over the last year (pictured in purple in Figure 1). The cumulative results from those 11 parcels are:
- 9.75 sections (2,496 hectares)
- $2.45 MM total bonus
- The average price per area for those parcels over the last year was ~$251,000/section ($981/ha.)
BOE Intel subscribers will also have access to some interesting A&D activity in the area and will be able to plot those transactions on the map. Over the last year in the area shown, we can observe:
- AER licence transfers
- 3 separate AER licence transfer applications have been approved, totalling 175 wells, and 17 pipelines.
- Mineral rights transfers
- 2 separate mineral rights transfers totaling 12.6 net sections (3,232 hectares).
- Well licence transfers
- 2 separate well licence transfers involving 175 licences and zero production.
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Figure 1
