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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
June 2009

Vol. 14, No. 26 Week of June 28, 2009

Kaloa well dry, Aurora not discouraged

Kay Cashman

Petroleum News

The most recent gas development well drilled by Aurora Gas on the west side of Cook Inlet was a dry hole, company President Scott Pfoff told Petroleum News in mid-June.

The Kaloa No. 3 well was the company’s second dry development well in the Kaloa field, he said.

“The geology is starting to get to us,” Pfoff said. “But we’re not ready to throw in the towel yet.”

He said the other dry hole, Kaloa No. 4, was drilled several years ago.

The independent plans to drill one more gas development well this summer, as well as possibly use fracture technology at a well in its Three Mile Creek field and re-complete and clean out Kaloa No. 2 well.

The company’s next gas development well will be drilled at the Nicolai Creek field, also on the west side of Cook Inlet, where Aurora operates five gas fields.

Initially, Pfoff hoped to drill another gas development well this summer, at Aurora’s Moquawkie field, but the company’s owners decided to defer that well, he said June 25, until gas prices improve.

While Aurora is waiting for its permits from the State of Alaska for Nicolai Creek, Pfoff hopes to keep Aurora’s AWS No. 1 drilling rig busy with the work at Three Mile Creek and Kaloa.

Hoped to do some coal coring

“With the Moquawkie No. 5 well that’s been deferred, we’d wanted to target the high pressure gas we encountered that caused our diverter incident last year at Moquawkie No. 4,” he said, explaining that Moquawkie No. 5 was going to be drilled just a few hundred feet from No. 4.

“We were targeting some other sands that are in the Moquawkie No. 4 well that we suspect got hit with some heavy drilling mud. It may have damaged the formation, but our owners would rather we wait, in belief gas prices will increase.

“We were also looking at doing some coalbed analysis — some coal coring at No. 5 — as well as target some of the shallower Beluga sands that were probably damaged during drilling,” Pfoff said. “We’d have been better able to produce from those sands with the new well.”

But Aurora’s owners thought “there is still a chance we can get the gas from those sands from Moquawkie No. 4. They want to wait for gas prices to improve before we go after shallow coal.”

Pfoff estimates it will be about 45 days before Aurora has its Nicolai Creek well permits.

Editor’s note: The diverter incident Scott Pfoff refers to in this article was a blowout in which Aurora hit an unexpected shallow gas pocket while drilling, forcing drilling mud back up and out of the drilling hole. It was controlled in less than 24 hours. For more information see the Dec. 14, 2008, edition of Petroleum News.






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