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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
January 2008

Vol. 13, No. 3 Week of January 20, 2008

Rutter aims to snag rig for Glennallen

Texas independent hopes to take a spring or summer stab at difficult well in natural gas prospect in Alaska’s Copper River basin

Eric Lidji

Petroleum News

An independent oil and gas company searching for natural gas in the Copper River Basin believes it can start drilling this spring or summer by grabbing a rig headed for Cook Inlet.

“We believe we’ve got a rig lined up and we’re negotiating to bring it from Canada into Alaska,” said Bill Rutter Jr., with Rutter and Wilbanks Corp. out of Midland, Texas.

Rutter Jr. declined to name the rig company while negotiations were still ongoing, but said the rig would be coming into Alaska this spring along the Glenn Highway, passing by the Glennallen area prospect the company has been working on for years.

“While it’s coming, it’ll pick up a job on the way,” Rutter Jr. said.

Seismic suggests commercial quantities

Rutter and Wilbanks has been wrestling with a natural gas prospect in the Copper River basin for years, fighting everything from extremely high well pressure to extremely high rig prices.

But Rutter Jr. believes his company is definitely sitting on something.

The Ahtna 1-19 well is situated at the highest point in the area and Rutter Jr. said seismic work suggests the reservoir stretches out in every direction, indicating billions of cubic feet of natural gas.

“We’ve absolutely proven to have gas in that formation,” he said. “It could be 100 bcf or it could be 300 bcf. It’s definitely commercial.”

A small, but commercial natural gas find in the area would most likely be used for local utilities and other needs in the area.

The well currently sits on land owned by Ahtna Inc., a Native regional corporation with royalty rights on the project.

Copper River prospects have long been elusive

The prospect of oil and gas near Glennallen goes back at least 50 years, when Amoco drilled the unsuccessful Moose Creek No. 1 well in the area in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Copper Valley Machine Works drilled the Alicia No. 1 well in the area in 1983.

Rutter and Wilbanks arrived on the scene in February 2005 in search of natural gas, but the company ended up facing high geological pressure at relatively shallow depths and not much gas further below.

Using exceptionally heavy drilling mud to combat the pressure, the company ended up damaging a potential reservoir formation, and in the fall of 2006, Rutter and Wilbanks unsuccessfully tried to push through the damaged section of the reservoir rock.

The following spring, the company drilled a sidetrack well and hit gas at 4,350 feet.

But the gas came with a great deal of water and Rutter and Wilbanks drilled a second sidetrack this past fall to get a better read on the amount of water in the formation.

As for any oil finds, Rutter Jr. said the company “never saw anything heavier than C-1 (methane).”






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