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Cosmopolitan flow test ‘encouraging’ Pioneer plans to permit appraisal wells this summer, drill another well in 2009; gas accumulations could justify pipeline to KKPL By Alan Bailey & Eric Lidji Petroleum News
Encouraged by recent well test results, Pioneer Natural Resources plans to start development permitting for its Southcentral Alaska Cosmopolitan Unit and working on facility design this year in preparation for appraisal drilling in 2009, according to a company spokesman.
Tadd Owens, director of government and public affairs for the large Dallas-based independent oil company, told Petroleum News that the Rowan 68 rig recently completed work on the Hansen 1A-L1 sidetrack well, spud back in September from private land on a bluff overlooking Cook Inlet.
The extended test produced 400 to 500 barrels of oil per day from the Starichkof zone.
“That production, coupled with the results from ConocoPhillips’ extended test of the Hemlock zone in 2003, encourages us to continue moving forward with the project,” Owens wrote in an e-mail.
Following the 2009 appraisal well, Pioneer will decide whether or not to sanction full development of Cosmopolitan.
Upon completion of drilling at Hansen 1A-L1 back in November, Pioneer announced a similar timeline along with plans for 12 more horizontal directional wells if Hansen 1A-L1 proved successful.
Gas potential could justify pipeline While it remains primarily an oil resource, Cosmopolitan has limited gas potential.
Pioneer plans to build a 16-mile gas pipeline to connect to the Kenai-Kachemak Pipeline, or KKPL, in Ninilchik.
For the past 18 months, Cosmopolitan has been one of three gas resources thought to possibly justify an extension of infrastructure into the southern Kenai Peninsula.
With the announcement of a pipeline extending to the KKPL, Pioneer moves in front of Armstrong Oil and Gas, the Colorado-based independent long considered to be the front runner with its North Fork unit 10 miles north of Homer.
But Owens stressed that Cosmopolitan is “essentially an oil resource with some marginal gas” and that full development would have a greater impact on oil pipelines in Cook Inlet than on gas pipelines.
Cosmopolitan goes back 40 years The 25,000-acre state and federal Cosmopolitan unit sits around two miles offshore from Anchor Point in the southern Kenai Peninsula.
Pioneer has put the recoverable resource potential of the area between 30 million and 50 million barrels of oil.
Interest in the area dates back to a small oil accumulation Pennzoil discovered in 1967 with the Starichkof State No. 1 well, drilled offshore with a jack-up rig. The company recovered 30 barrels of oil from a drill stem test at about 6,900 feet and 21 barrels from a drill stem test at about 6,800 feet.
In a second well drilled that year Pennzoil found some gas as well, but neither well suggested an economic find.
Using an onshore pad, previous unit operator ConocoPhillips drilled a long-reach well and sidetrack called Hansen No. 1 and Hansen No. 1-A in 2003.
Those wells “tested at a stabilized rate of 600 to 800 barrels a day over different intervals that lasted three to four months,” according to statements made back in 2005 by Tim Dove, president and chief operating officer for Pioneer.
Pioneer gradually bought out all the working interest owners of Cosmopolitan, including the ConocoPhillips’ status as operator, in 2006.
Pioneer drilled Hansen 1A-L1 from the same onshore pad used by ConocoPhillips. The pad sits six miles north of Anchor Point between the Sterling Highway and the coast.
Pioneer has been testing the sidetrack well for several months.
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