Hilcorp applies for Beaver Creek expansion

Hilcorp Alaska has applied to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission for approval of changes to the pool rules for the Beluga gas pool in the Beaver Creek field, a small oil and gas field 11 miles north of the city of Kenai on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. The requested changes involve a nearly 1,600-foot increase in the thickness of the pool and an easing of the restrictions on well spacing within the field.

The existing rules for the Beluga pool were established in 1988, and prior to that the field had produced gas from the Sterling and upper Tyonek formation, and oil from the lower Tyonek formation, Hilcorp told the commission in its rule-change application. Production from the field has been declining, peaking in December 1985 at 10,067 barrels of oil and 1,588 million cubic feet of gas and dropping to 4,732 barrels of oil and 175 million cubic feet of gas in January 2014, Hilcorp said.

Hilcorp said that, as part of a program to revitalize its legacy assets in the Cook Inlet basin, it anticipates undertaking up to six well workovers and the drilling of eight new wells or sidetracks within the next few years at Beaver Creek.

The company said that the purpose of the vertical adjustment in the pool rule is to include all potentially gas-bearing sands in the pool. And, to enable the efficient recovery of remaining resources in the field, it is necessary to allow unrestricted well spacing except near the boundary of the Beaver Creek unit. The change in the well spacing rule will enable the targeting of small isolated areas of the field reservoirs and the maximization of hydrocarbon recovery from pays bypassed by existing development wells, Hilcorp said.

—Alan Bailey