By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Feb. 7 -- Success in deeper formations, particularly Ordovician Trenton-Black River, by Talisman Energy Inc. in the US Appalachian basin is drawing more operators to take up acreage in Quebec.
The province has no sustained oil or gas production at present and is practically unexplored in deeper formations.
Junex, Quebec City, and Team Energy LLC, Bridgeport, Ill., signed an agreement under which Team Energy will spend as much as $24 million (US) in 3 years exploring seven blocks of Junex-held lands in the province's St. Lawrence lowlands and Gaspe regions.
Team Energy and partners created the Canadian entity AMQUE ULC as a follow-up to a letter of intent signed in October 2005 (OGJ Online, Oct. 6, 2005). AMQUE has the right to earn 100% interest in four blocks totaling 500,000 acres, and Junex will receive a 5% royalty on any hydrocarbons produced and an option to convert the royalty to a 15% interest.
AMQUE will have the right to earn 40-85% interest in the other three blocks. It will have first right of refusal on exploration projects in the St.-Simon and Galt regions. Junex-held permits in the Batiscan, Champlain, Nicolet, and Becancour regions are excluded from the agreement.
Junex holds more than 2.4 million acres of permits in Quebec and the right to participate in 1.6 million acres in Gaspe held by Petrolia Inc., Rimouski, Que.
Talisman, with sizable Trenton-Black River discoveries in New York and West Virginia, reportedly took a large acreage position in Quebec in 2005. The lands are generally north of Quebec City, north of the St. Lawrence River, and near Sherbrooke, east of Montreal.
Meanwhile, Hydro-Quebec Petrole et Gaz, Quebec City, has acquired Soquip Energie's extensive geoscience database that provides access to more than 66,000 km of seismic data on eastern Canada.
Hydro-Quebec in partnership with Questerre Energy Corp., Calgary, and Gastem Inc., Montreal, have drilled unsuccessfully near Nouvelle on the Gaspe Peninsula, and Corridor Resources Inc., Halifax, and Hydro-Quebec were unsuccessful on Anticosti Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
A more recent entrant, Golden Apple Oil & Gas Inc., Phoenix, holds the Sawyerville and Cookshire properties in the lowlands southeast of Sherbrooke. Sherbrooke is within 50 miles of the US border with Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.
