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Cook Inlet Energy draws up Sword plans Anchorage company enters into contract for Patterson rig 191; planned well is adjacent to producing West McArthur River oil field Wesley Loy For Petroleum News
Cook Inlet Energy LLC says it has contracted a rig to drill its Sword well adjacent to the company’s producing West McArthur River field.
Patterson-UTI Drilling Co.’s rig 191 will do the job. Patterson has more than 300 land-based rigs operating in the Lower 48, Alaska and western and northern Canada.
Cook Inlet Energy plans to mobilize the rig to the drilling location at the end of May.
“We are excited to have secured this rig and for the potential that the Sword No. 1 well holds for the company,” Cook Inlet Energy’s chief executive, David Hall, said in a May 20 press release.
Oil is the primary target, Hall said in a talk with Petroleum News.
The extended-reach well will be directionally drilled to 19,000 feet.
It will target probable reserves in an adjacent fault block to the West McArthur River field.
“Company-owned 3-D seismic over the prospect area shows a faulted four-way closure with a 240-acre structure that contains an estimated recoverable 800,000 barrels of oil,” the press release said.
In the mid-1960s, Pan American drilled a well into the same fault block, and mud logs had oil shows throughout the 500-foot-thick Hemlock formation, the primary target for the Sword No. 1, the release added.
Patterson’s rig 191 recently did some drilling for Apache Alaska Inc. in the Cook Inlet basin, Petroleum News reported in its Nov. 18 issue.
Promising backdrop for well Cook Inlet Energy is a young company based in Anchorage. It’s a subsidiary of Miller Energy Resources Inc., a publicly traded company headquartered in Knoxville, Tenn.
Cook Inlet Energy has producing wells on the Osprey offshore platform, and at the West McArthur River field.
The Sword well holds great promise for the company, Hall said. The average initial production for every well drilled in the West McArthur River field, which started up in 1991, was 2,000 barrels per day, he said.
That’s more than the total daily production Cook Inlet Energy currently has from its Alaska properties.
Susitna basin gas prospects Cook Inlet Energy also has plans to drill in the Susitna basin, where the company holds three exploration licenses covering more than 580,000 acres of state land. The basin is north of Anchorage and west of the Willow community.
The company on April 24 filed an amended plan of operations for its Susitna exploration license No. 2.
The plan said the company in March and April completed a winter access trail and pad for up to two exploratory wells on the Kroto Creek natural gas prospect. Drilling could occur during the winter of 2013-14.
Cook Inlet Energy said it has other exploration prospects in the area, including Moose Creek and Big Bend.
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