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Nenana gas well to spud by end of June Doyon, ASRC, Usibelli, Rampart partnership hoping for large enough discovery to supply Fairbanks and Anchorage area By Wesley Loy For Petroleum News
A Doyon Ltd. executive says the Fairbanks regional Native corporation and its partners expect to start drilling for natural gas in the Nenana basin by the end of June.
The partners are still wrapping up some details such as applying to the state Department of Environmental Conservation for approval of an oil discharge prevention and contingency plan.
Aside from Doyon, the exploratory group includes Arctic Slope Regional Corp., Usibelli Energy and Rampart Energy Co. of Denver.
Rampart will be project operator using Doyon’s highly mobile Arctic Wolf rig, which has yet to be trucked down from the North Slope, Jim Mery, Doyon senior vice president of lands and natural resources, told Petroleum News on June 10.
The drill site is on Alaska Mental Health Trust land about three miles west of Nenana and 55 miles southwest of Fairbanks. The Nunivak No. 1 well will have a target depth of 10,500 to 11,000 feet and will cost around $15 million, Mery said.
“This is the first deep test of the basin,” he said. The rig will drill a vertical hole into a feature that looks to have fluid-saturated sands possibly holding gas and water or gas, water and oil.
Sales options The partnership is hoping to find enough gas for one of three sales scenarios, Mery said.
One might be to use gas to produce electricity on site. “We see opportunity to send power north or south on the intertie,” he said.
A bigger find might allow sending gas by pipeline to Fairbanks for industrial, business and home use, Mery said.
The most optimistic scenario, he said, would see Nenana Basin gas going south to the Anchorage area, where existing Cook Inlet gas supplies are beginning to run low.
An ARCO well in 1983 was the last hole drilled in the lightly explored basin, Mery said. And that well was on the basin’s flank. The Doyon partnership has licensed all the data from that well, and it’s encouraging, he said.
Drilling the well should take about 40 days, following by a couple of weeks of testing, Mery said.
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