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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
March 2014

Vol. 19, No. 9 Week of March 02, 2014

DEC issues proposed Furie Cook Inlet platform discharge permit

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, has issued a proposed permit for the discharge of waste water from an offshore gas production platform that Furie Operating Alaska plans to install in Cook Inlet later this year. The platform will enable natural gas production from a gas field that Furie discovered in its Kitchen Lights unit in 2011.

The public notice for the permit says that the platform will be located about 15 miles northwest of Nikiski Bay on the Kenai Peninsula and will be connected to shore facilities by pipeline. Five barges will support the platform installation and pipeline construction. And the discharge permit covers discharges from the barges, as well as discharges of domestic wastewater and deck drainage from the platform — drainage from the platform is expected to start in August 2014, the notice says.

The permit includes specifications of zones for the mixing with seawater of waste from horizontal drilling operations associated with pipeline construction. In a pipeline easement application that Furie has previously submitted to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources Furie has said that it plans to lay twin gas pipelines from its platform to an onshore gas processing facility near Nikiski. Directional drilling will be used to bore a subsurface corridor to allow the pipelines to run underground below a coast bluff, to emerge on the seafloor beyond the intertidal zone.

Furie made the gas discovery in 2011 when drilling the Kitchen Lights unit No. 1 well using the Spartan 151 jack-up rig. The company has since drilled two more wells in the unit and started a third. A statement of discovery that Furie filed with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources in July said the Kitchen Lights unit No. 3 well, drilled in the summer of 2013, had encountered multiple productive gas pools in the Sterling and Beluga formations at depths ranging from 3,618 feet to 6,228 feet. In March 2012 Furie told the state Legislature the find in the No. 1 well was estimated to have probable reserves of 750 billion cubic feet, with a potential production rate of up to 30 million cubic feet per day.

Since that 2012 statement Furie has remained reticent about commenting on the scale of its gas discovery at Kitchen Lights. But the company’s commitment to the considerable expense of installing an offshore platform and associated infrastructure would appear to indicate the existence of a sizable find.

Comments on the discharge permit are required by March 28.

—Alan Bailey






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