The Badami Oil Pool was discovered in 1990, and developed through a drilling program lasting from 1997 to 1998. The pool has now been penetrated by 19 well bores, most of which are clustered near the center of the Badami Unit. There are 8 additional wells that lie inside of, or within 4 miles of, the unit boundaries. The pool began regular production on August 23, 1998, and peaked at average rate of 7,450 barrels per day during September 1998. However, production rapidly declined to 3,300 barrels per day by January 1999, and the field was shut in from February 4 through April 30, 1999. After facilities were upgraded, production was restarted on May 1, 1999 and jumped to an average of nearly 5,300 barrels per day during July of 1999. However, by year-end 1999, production declined to an average of less than 3,000 barrels per day, and by June 2003 it averaged less than 1,300 barrels per day from six wells. In August, 2003, the Regulatory Commission of Alaska approved BP’s request to temporarily shut down the Badami oil pipeline and gas products pipeline for approximately two years. BP shut-in production and placed the facilities in “warm shutdown” that same month.

Initially production rates were expected to reach 35,000 barrels per day, but production rates for the apparently complex and compartmentalized pool peaked at 7,450 barrels per day during September 1998, declined to less than 3,000 barrels per day by December 1999, and averaged less than 1,200 barrels per day during July 2003, just before the pool was shut in.

Regular production from the Badami Pool resumed in September 2005. In October of that year, the pool averaged 1,785 barrels per day from five producing wells, and by December average oil production declined to 1,437 barrels per day from six producing wells. By July 2007, average oil production declined to 876 barrels per day from four producing wells. BP shut the field in to recharge during late August 2007, BP joined with Savant Alaska, a subsidiary of Savant Resources LLC, in April 2008 to conduct engineering, permitting and inspection operations with the intent of restarting Badami. Late in 2008, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation joined with BP and Savant to revitalize production from the pool by drilling horizontal wells and hydraulically fracturing them.

The Badami reservoir consists of a series of turbidite sandstones assigned to the Tertiary-aged Canning Formation. These sandstones were deposited as amalgamated channel sands within mud-dominated submarine fan systems. Published descriptions suggest the reservoirs are complex, consisting of 61 identified fans laid down during seven depositional events, with thin and discontinuous reservoir quality sands. No single well has encountered all of the identified fan systems, but Badami #1 reportedly has the most complete section. The Badami Oil Pool is defined as the accumulation of hydrocarbons common to and correlating with the interval between the measured depths of 9,500 feet and 11,500 feet in the Badami No. 1 well. The reservoir sandstones are very fine-to-fine grained and moderately sorted. Porosity ranges from 15 to 21 percent, permeability ranges from 1 to 400 md, and oil gravity ranges from 21 to 30 degrees API.