The company announced Monday the selection of Boland Drilling, which will drill approximately 85 rotary borings at the property in Judith Basin County.
Exploration drilling is set to commence soon and will be expedited with the use of two rotary rigs.
Boland will also conduct direct air rotary drilling, mud rotary drilling if necessary, and coring and plugging. It will provide a 15-foot split barrel NQ conventional core system to perform fluid coring with the rotary rigs.
American Power president Al Valencia spoke to the contracted company’s reputation and extensive experience working with several major coal companies and mines in the region.
“Our hard work and perseverance are beginning to pay off as we keep advancing with the development of our Pace Coal Project,” he said.
“After an arduous permitting process, we are finally moving closer to initiating drilling operations as early as this week."
The entire exploration drilling program consists of 61 drilling sites and a total of 53,875 feet of drilling in three phases. The first phase will include 13 drilling locations, while the second and third phases will total 9 and 39 drilling locations, respectively.
The intent of American Power’s drilling program is to classify significant portions of Pace’s coal holdings as proven and probable reserves, and ultimately to establish sufficient resources to support an operations lifespan exceeding 20 years.
The Denver-headquartered company acquired the 29,000 acres that make up the Pace Coal Project in April 2010.
Estimated resources in place, based on exploration work by Mobil Oil (now ExxonMobil), range from 172 million up to more than 410 million tons of high-vol bituminous B coal.
