Is there oil or gas in the Boise Basin?

Idaho has no natural gas or oil production within its borders, but an energy company from Calgary, Alberta, hopes that will soon change.

Bridge Resources Corp. has filed for permits to drill four exploration wells near New Plymouth and Payette - a part of the Treasure Valley where companies have searched for oil and gas since the early 1900s.

The last well in the area was drilled in 1988, according to the Idaho Geological Survey.

The company and its partner, Paramax Resources Ltd., also of Canada, are basing their hopes on a new analysis of past seismic test results. Noncommercial levels of natural gas and oil have showed up in past exploration, the company and a state geologist said.

"Several older wells flowed gas to surface at measured rates up to 400,000 cubic feet per day, and two of the four deeper wells in the basin recorded oil shows," the company said in a press release.

If that level of gas is sustainable, it would be considered a successful commercial production with the new technology companies use to run wells with more efficiency than in years past.

Virginia Gillerman, a geologist with the Idaho Geological Survey in Boise, said she has long heard of low-volume natural gas discoveries in the area, though not oil.

"I don't have any reason to doubt it," she said.

All four wells are planned on private land, but two would use leases of state-reserved mineral rights. Two wells will be located east and southwest of New Plymouth, with the other two planned for the Willow Creek drainage northeast of Payette.

Bridge Resources Vice President Tom Stewart said the company will protect the environment and the landowners.

"We are working with the surface owners on reimbursement for any crop damage that occurs," he said.

The company plans to bring a drilling rig in from Wyoming sometime before the end of the year. It plans to drill between 4,000 and 7,000 feet deep, with the shallow wells taking about 10 days and the deeper wells up to 25 days, Stewart said.

He would not estimate how many people would be working or what the economic impact will be. But the company already has a geologist and landmen working on the ground.

"If we make a discovery, the state will certainly be getting some revenue," Stewart said.

Idaho already gets revenue for its endowment fund from oil and gas leases on state land. Since 2006, it has held auctions that have brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars with leases across southern Idaho.

The state will require the company to put up a $25,000 blanket bond for its drilling program. Bridge Resources also will be required to cap dry holes before moving on to the next one, said Eric Wilson, Idaho Department of Lands minerals program manager.

The wells are considered "wildcat" exploration wells since there is no production in the basin or the state, Wilson said. If the explorers hit gas or oil on the state leases and begin production, they would pay a 12.5 percent royalty to the endowment fund.

The last well drilled in the state was in 2007 near Grays Lake in Bonneville County. It was apparently dry - or at least it didn't lead to a new project.

The last time there was a flurry of interest in Idaho was from the early 1970s until the late 1980s.

Most of the activity then took place in eastern Idaho, in part of an area known as the Overthrust Belt, a 250- to 500-million-year-old rock formation that runs from Alaska to Mexico. This area had produced large oil and gas fields in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado.

The geology in the western Treasure Valley is significantly younger, Gillerman said. The Tertiary Period sediments that underlie the area range from 2 million to 15 million years old.

She has found the petrified wood of a sequoia-like tree that suggests the climate was once wetter and more like Southern California's. That humid climate allowed more organic material to grow, decay and be captured in the sediments where gas and oil explorers look today.

That may be the type of data that aids oil and gas companies today, but the drillers in the early 1900s likely made their searches based on information farmers gave to them of hidden natural gas seeps at the surface, Gillerman said.

She doesn't expect major conflicts from the drilling, even if the wells go to full production sometime in the future.

"Oil and gas wells and farmland are pretty compatible," Gillerman said. "I'd just as soon see oil wells as subdivisions, personally."

Rocky Barker: 377-6425