Alaska Shale: Cook Inlet companies eye unconventionals

Kay Cashman

Petroleum News

While most of the focus in Alaska is on shale oil plays on the North Slope, at least two oil and gas companies in the Cook Inlet basin are looking at checking out the source rock, or shale, in their acreage — Aurora Gas and Escopeta Oil.

As this section in Petroleum News went into production on March 17 morning (see page 1 article for latest news), Escopeta had loaded the Spartan 151 jack-up rig onto a heavy lift vessel at a dock in Freeport, Texas, and was expecting to set sail for Alaska late that afternoon or the next morning.

Escopeta President Danny Davis told Petroleum News that he intends to check out the source rock in his Kitchen Lights unit wells, while looking for conventional oil and gas targets.

“We’re going to take a look at the source rock as best as we can with the jack-up,” Davis said. If it looks promising for an unconventional resource play, which is what Great Bear Petroleum is chasing on the North Slope, Escopeta is going to further check it out once it gets a production platform in place.

And at an Anchorage Chamber of Commerce meeting on Feb. 7, Aurora Gas President Scott Pfoff said that last summer Aurora successfully tried using hydraulic fracturing in a well in its Three Mile Creek field. The technique, similar to the “fracking” done in Lower 48 shale gas wells, was applied to the field reservoir in a conventional gas well, with the effect of boosting gas production, Pfoff later told Petroleum News. Aurora hopes to use the same technology in other wells and is also interested in the potential to use modern fracking techniques in other Cook Inlet situations, such as in tight gas sands or perhaps in gas source rocks, Pfoff said.

Aurora has for some time been interested in the potential to develop coalbed methane in and around its leases, especially given that those leases are in remote locations, near the pipeline infrastructure but far from population centers.

Pfoff said the company estimates there is a coalbed methane resource equivalent to at least a 10-year gas supply for Southcentral Alaska just in the areas around Aurora’s leases.

“The resource potential is huge,” he said, also commenting that any development would need to be carried out in a way that avoids the pitfalls encountered in the past with Alaska coalbed methane proposals.