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Permitting time clock restarted on Katalla exploration project
Kay Cashman PNA Publisher
The state has restarted the permitting time clock for the Cassandra Energy Corp.’s Katalla oil and gas exploration project in the east Copper River Delta region 56 miles southeast of Cordova.
Cassandra hopes to drill two or three exploratory wells near the former town of Katalla, the site of Alaska’s first commercial oil production. When that drilling will occur is dependent on the final issuance of permits and approval of a revised environmental assessment from the U.S. Forest Service.
Nina Brudie, project review coordinator for the state Division of Governmental Coordination, notified Cassandra President Bill Stevens by letter that the review had been restarted on Oct. 28.
The permitting time-clock was stopped July 8 after a request for additional information from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. On July 17, DGC documents said, the applicant provided the information, but DGC continued the review suspension because of “unusually complex issues” around, among other things, spill plan issues with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, a DGC official told PNA in early October.
“ADF&G and ADEC have received the additional information you submitted and consider it adequate,” Brudie wrote in the Oct. 28 letter to Stevens. She said the revised review milestones are: comments due to DGC: Nov. 6; proposed determination on or before Nov. 18; and final determination on or before Nov. 25.
Land position Cassandra has a lease-purchase agreement with Del and Ginger Welch for the 465-acre Katalla oil field.
Cassandra also has a lease-option for oil and gas rights on 10,134 acres adjacent to the shut-in Katalla oil field from Chugach Alaska Corp., an Alaska Native regional corporation. The surface rights are controlled by the Chugach National Forest.
According to a 1982 settlement agreement between Chugach Alaska’s predecessor, Chugach Natives Inc., and the U.S. Department of Interior, the Native corporation must drill a well capable of producing in paying quantities in the 10,134 acres by midnight Dec. 31, 2004, or all right, title and interest to the acreage reverts back to the United States. If Cassandra finds commercial quantities of oil on its Chugach Alaska leases, Rick Rogers, vice president for land and resources for the Native corporation, said his corporation is entitled to surface access under the 1982 agreement.
Surface access would include pipelines, roads and other facilities for the transportation of oil and gas from the Katalla area to market, he said. Drilling plans According to the final exploration plan Stevens filed with the Forest Service, the drilling rig and crew camp would sit on the private land Cassandra purchased from the Welchs. One exploratory well would be drilled vertically to explore the subsurface of Katalla Claim 1; the other well would be drilled laterally from the drill site to explore Chugach Alaska’s subsurface acreage. A third well into the subsurface controlled by Chugach Alaska was also a possibility, the plan said. Stevens is the safety and health program coordinator for Inlet Drilling Alaska Inc. in Kenai.
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