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The Explorers 2008: Fowler preparing for Kircher drilling
Fowler Oil and Gas Corp. has been preparing to drill for coalbed methane at its Kircher prospect in Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Borough, in an area of farmland and forest between the towns of Wasilla and Palmer.
Coalbed methane exploration has in the past provoked great controversy in Southcentral Alaska because of concerns about industry access to privately owned surface land and about the possibility of water produced from coalbed methane production contaminating well water.
However, the Kircher well will be on private homestead land, where the landowner owns both the surface and subsurface rights. And the drilling will use revolutionary new technology that involves the use of multiple horizontal wells that thread their way through coal seams from a single 3,500-foot vertical well; produced water will be pumped from inside the vertical well into a sandstone reservoir below the level of the coal seams, thus eliminating the possibility of the produced water entering the water table.
The small building that will house the wellhead production equipment will be disguised to look like a colony barn and will be painted to blend with the landscape — an underground pipeline will transport the methane gas to an existing Enstar gas line about a half-mile away.
Permitted In October 2007 the Matanuska-Susitna Borough approved a conditional use permit for the Kircher No. 1 well and on May 14 the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission issued a drilling permit for the well. On June 5 Fowler Oil and Gas announced that it had started to construct an access road and drilling pad at the well site, in preparation for drilling.
Bob Fowler, the company’s CEO, told Petroleum News in June that initial drilling activities will involve Tester Drilling Services using a small rig to core vertically to a depth of 2,500 feet. If the coring proves successful Scientific Drilling Inc. will take over the drilling operation and use the Aurora Well Service No. 1 rig to ream out the initial coring well and drill the initial horizontal wells, he said. Fowler also said that his company would bring in its own Speedstar 185 rig to enable Scientific Drilling to drill the remaining horizontal wells.
But Fowler would not speculate on when the coring will start.
“We’re going to take our time on this and do it right,” he said.
—Alan Bailey
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