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Cook Inlet Energy restores Redoubt well Flow rate from RU-1 well on Osprey platform impresses after company completes an extensive workover operation; more to come Wesley Loy For Petroleum News
Cook Inlet Energy LLC recently reactivated another well on its offshore Osprey platform, following a vigorous “fishing” expedition.
Osprey is the southernmost platform in Cook Inlet, and sits in the Redoubt unit.
Cook Inlet Energy and its parent company, Tennessee-based Miller Energy Resources Inc., acquired the platform in late 2009, along with a collection of other oil and gas assets on the inlet’s west side.
Since then, the Anchorage-based Cook Inlet Energy team has been working to restore production from the shut-in wells on Osprey. The platform had multiple operators previously, the last of which liquidated through bankruptcy.
On Oct. 30, publicly traded Miller Energy announced that a workover had been completed on the RU-1 oil well, and that its initial production was 482 barrels per day.
That greatly exceeds the average flow rate of 125 barrels per day under the previous operator from September 2007 through July 2009, Miller said in a press release.
Gone fishin’ During an Oct. 30 investor conference call, Cook Inlet Energy’s chief executive, David Hall, said the RU-1 well was producing oil with no water cut.
“I’m not aware of any other crude oil well on the Cook Inlet that produces 100 percent oil,” said Hall, a veteran of the Cook Inlet oil scene. “RU-1 is well-positioned high on the Redoubt Shoal structure, producing from the Hemlock formation, which is over 700 feet thick.”
Cook Inlet Energy used its new rig 35, recently installed atop the Osprey platform, to do the well workover. The rig showed outstanding performance on quite a complex operation, he said.
The workover entailed the removal of numerous fish from the well. In oil industry parlance, a fish is anything left behind in a wellbore. In this case, the fish included bad electric submersible pumps, packers, subsurface valves, clamps, straps, electrical cable, “basically various stuff left in the well from previous operators,” Hall said.
“Thankfully, we were able to remove the majority of these items,” he said. “We estimated that we removed a total of 31,000 pounds.”
More workovers planned During the workover, Cook Inlet Energy also encountered collapsed casing nearly 2.5 miles down that took considerable time to expand back to its original inside diameter, Hall said.
A new electric submersible pump was installed in bringing the RU-1 well back online on Oct. 27, Hall said.
Another well, RU-7, has been running for some time on the Osprey platform. Since January, that well has produced nearly 60,000 barrels of oil and is far exceeding its historical rates, Hall said.
Overall, production from the Osprey platform is running just over 700 barrels per day.
The company is now setting its sights on reviving other Osprey wells.
The next target is RU-3, a 14,000-foot natural gas well that had initial production of more than 8 million cubic feet a day before output dramatically fell off, Hall said.
The previous operator thought it was a formation problem, he said.
“We believe it was not a formation problem, but rather a surface mechanical issue due to the high pressure with nearly 4,000 psi without a sufficient pressure reducing device in place to keep the wellhead and associated piping from literally freezing off,” Hall said. “Our workover plan basically consists of removing all the old completion and reassessing the zone of interest, followed by installing the necessary devices to effectively reduce the high pressure without freezing.”
Rig 35 already has been skidded over the RU-3 well, which Hall believes has “enormous potential” for supplying the company’s internal gas needs and helping it become a net gas exporter.
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