The Armelise #1 is a well that we originally introduced in our boutique model as a moderate-risk new drilling prospect. As we state time and time again, our boutique deals are structured like an onion, an investment-onion.
The outermost layer of the investment-onion is Part-A, an already producing asset. Something that we confidently feel will immediately provide cashflow to investors as soon as the deal closes.
The next layer of the investment-onion is Part-B, a new drilling prospect. Something with a little more risk, but with great potential tax-benefit, and great reward potential if the well is a success.
Armelise #1 was initially a Part-B to our boutique deal, The Liberty Project. It was paired with the Part-A producing well Dugas & Leblanc #4.
Now, while Armelise was the risk-side of this deal, it wasn’t an uncalculated risk. Armelise was developed inside the Napoleonville Field using geological and geophysical work behind the prospect. The goal was to identify an undrained piece of reservoir that we believed could be successfully developed.
Napoleonville was already a field we knew had produced a LOT of oil and gas. The field has been developed for decades, with multiple productive fault blocks and wells with substantial production histories. What interested us wasn’t discovering some brand-new oil field. It was using the geological information, old well control, production history and our 3D seismic work to look for pieces of the existing field that we believed had been left behind.
That was the idea behind Armelise. The prospect sat in its own portion of the Napoleonville structure, and the geological work gave us confidence that there was reservoir there that had not been adequately drained by the older development around it.
Here’s the best part: it was a staggering success. Armelise #1 was drilled in August of 2024 and was on production by October. It came on strong, producing several hundred barrels of oil per day. Early production moved in roughly the 400–700 barrel-per-day range. By September of 2025, Armelise had produced roughly 160,000 barrels of oil and was still producing around 480 barrels per day.
Armelise #1 performed so well that we decided to put in offers to buy out production for some of the Liberty investors. They received their pay-day, and we prepped to use the Armelise #1 to launch our next boutique deal.
Enter Sandman… or should I say Enter Silverado I!
We kept our classic Investment-Onion formula, only this time, Armelise #1 became the well-trusted trusted-well Part-A. (See what I did there?)
The Part-B for Silverado I was another well in the Napoleonville Field called Palmetto #1. The field is broken up by faults, creating separate areas that can have very different production histories despite being in the same larger field.
So while Armelise and Palmetto aren’t two wells drilled into the exact same reservoir compartment, they are very much related geologically. You could probably call them sister prospects without getting yelled at too badly by a geologist. Maybe cousins. We’ll go with cousins.
Palmetto had actually been a well drilled previously in the area back in 1943 that found oil. It produced roughly 36,000 barrels before water eventually became too much of a problem for the well to remain economic. That is important information because the old well proved there was oil in that fault block, and in the present, our modern seismic work gave us a reason to believe there may have been a much better place to drill it.
The Palmetto location we developed sits roughly 180–200 feet structurally higher than that old producing well. The older well demonstrated that the reservoir contained oil, but it was drilled lower on the structure and closer to the water.Our Palmetto location was designed to test that same general reservoir system substantially higher, where the geological interpretation indicated the possibility of a much better oil column.
The Armelise had proved itself to be more than just good research. We had already taken another Napoleonville prospect, drilled it, and watched it become one of the better wells in our boutique portfolio.
That doesn’t make Palmetto a sure thing. It still doesn’t. Part-B is Part-B for a reason. But Armelise gave us another piece of information that we simply did not have before Liberty.
It proved to us, and our boutique investors, that the geological and geophysical work we were doing in Napoleonville could translate into a successful new well.
That is really what makes Armelise #1 such an interesting story for us. Stay tuned for how Palmetto performs!!