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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant 12 hours ago

Pantera Minerals calls halt to prospective Lafayette County lithium well

magnoliareporter.com  11/23/2024

Pantera Minerals has shut down its effort to re-enter a well at its Lafayette County lithium brine project.

The Perth, Australia company said in a statement to shareholders that it encountered tubing and packer stuck in hole at 9,750 feet left by a previous operator -- not the current operator -- that had not been reported in previous documents lodged with the state as would normally be required.

After three days of attempting to remove the stuck pipe and packer from the well via a fishing operation the decision was made to shut down operations, and demobilize the rig and all service providers in order to preserve company cash.

While extremely frustrating for the company after12 months of planning, the result in no way diminishes the value of the Pantera Lithium Brine Project and leads to the company bringing forward its plan to drill a fresh and standalone well, the company said.

The process of planning and operating the re-entry has introduced the company to a reliable and competent group of service providers including drilling, operating, safety and environmental groups that will all be utilized on upcoming wells.

The re-entry procedure was selected over a fresh well due to the location of the target re-entry well and potential ability to quickly and economically obtain brine samples for analysis. While the company understood there could be issues with a well that was initially drilled and completed in the early 1980s, it was given confidence as reliable records of well completion data and operations are normally submitted to the state.

The company has subsequently discovered this was not the case and a previous owner and operator of the well failed to detail the stuck pipe and packer issue.

Pantera Minerals is well advanced on planning for a standalone resource definition well that is expected to spud in 2025. Discussions with surface owners have begun and the company expects to be able to update shareholders imminently.

The company has continued to acquire completed mineral ownership data (abstract) via its exclusive abstract agreement with the Lafayette Land & Title Company. The company intends to build on its acreage position which currently sits at greater than 26,000 net acres and 34,900 gross surface acres. Aggressive leasing has continued by other parties surrounding the company’s exclusive abstract area to the north and west.

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Permalink Reply by Rock Man 7 hours ago

Disappointing but not totally unexpected.

I wonder which well they were trying to re-enter.

Rule of thumb for old timers is that any re-entry operation has a high-risk chance of success.

Thinking that they spent around $250,000 on this failed operation.

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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant 7 hours ago

I'm thinking Pantera is under funded and was trying to get samples on the cheap.  The company likely acquired rights to that well before engaging the services of that "reliable and competent group of service providers". 

Seems Pantera engages in some wishful thinking.  I wish them good luck on their upcoming "fresh well".

"The re-entry procedure was selected over a fresh well due to the location of the target re-entry well and potential ability to quickly and economically obtain brine samples for analysis. While the company understood there could be issues with a well that was initially drilled and completed in the early 1980s, it was given confidence as reliable records of well completion data and operations are normally submitted to the state."

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Permalink Reply by Rock Man 6 minutes ago

Only spending three days trying to get the "stuck tubing and packer" out of the hole seems like a short time to persist with this process.

• And if this downhole info was not included in the state paperwork filed for this well, how can Pantera know what is really down hole?

Something doesn't sound right here based on what Pantera has reported.

But I do totally agree with your comment about "under funding".

• The most critical part of any Lithium program is to get good water samples that demonstrate economically viable lithium concentrations.

And the only way to do this is physically test the section (Smackover), get quality reservoir water samples and then hope for good analytical results.

• A lot riding on this operation since poor lithium concentration results essentially condemn their area of interest.

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