Gastem

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Montreal, Canada-based Gastem (TSX VENTURE: GMR) is a gas exploration junior. It owns drilling rights to approximately 3,135 sq. km. of land in the St. Lawrence Lowlands, the Gaspe Peninsula and the Magdalen Islands in the Canadian province of Quebec. It was involved in a joint venture with Canadian Forest Oil, Questerre Energy Corporation and Epsilon Energy Ltd to develop the Yamaska property in the St. Lawrence Lowlands. Forest was the operator of the Yamaska Utica shale development that consisted of 112,000 acres of drilling rights. Gastem owns a 20% working interest in the property. There were three horizontal wells that had been drilled on this permit, and in February, 2009 it announced drilling results.

In early January, 2009 the company announced a farm-in agreement with Canbriam Energy on two Mundiregina permits (92,104 acres) that were located in the St-Lawrence Lowlands directly south of the Yamaska property. Gastem was to have a 17% interest, Canbriam 68%, and the remainder to the sellers (farmors). Canbrian was to be the well operator.

It was also mentioned in February that Gastem and its partner, Canbriam Energy, had been in the process of selecting drilling sites on the St-Hyacinthe permit to the southwest of Yamaska. It was not apparent whether this was the same property referred to above as Mundiregina (although in a later press release, it was described as immediately south of Gastem's Yamaska Property--the same way Mundiregina was described.)

Three vertical test wells were to be drilled on this permit to test the Utica and Lorraine shale formations:

• Update #1: In August, 2009 Gastem announced that it had spudded the Saint-Hyacinthe No. 1 well. The depth of the vertical well was to be 8,300 feet, and it was expected to take about four weeks to finish drilling. The series of three wells was to test gas production on two distinctly different fault blocks, and also to analyze the Lorraine shale sequence. The companies planned to fracture stimulate the wells once core samples had been analyzed. A pipeline infrastructure was already available on the property.
• Update #2: A September, 2009 press release stated that the second well in the series had been spud. This well was to reach a depth of 6,890 feet through the Ordovician shale formations with a primary target of the Utica shale. It is known as La Presentation No. 1, and was expected to take about 4 weeks to drill.

In May, 2009, the company announced that by month-end it was to conduct a 39 square mile gravity survey in the vicinity of the Magdalen Islands east of the St. Lawrence Lowlands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Excel Geophysics will conduct the survey. Gastem's permit is located in the lower section of the Gulf in the Magdalen Basin. This basin has several salt domes similar to those found in the Gulf of Mexico which are considered highly prospective for conventional natural gas. The gravity data combined with earlier geophysical data collected on the Magdalen Islands will help Gastem zero in on the the best areas to explore.

Gastem has also been working with Boyd Petrosearch to reprocess and evaluate seismic data shot in the Magdalen Islands between the 1970s and 2002. Boyd will help Gastem evaluate all of the geological, geophysical and geochemical data developed over previous few decades and estimate the total natural gas potential for these islands. Almost 90 miles of seismic will be reprocessed.

Gastem also owns extensive drilling rights in New York and West Virginia.

• Raymond Savoie is the President of Gastem.
• Orville Cole is President of Gastem USA.
• David Vincent is a spokeman for the company.