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THE EXPLORERS 2005: Storm Cat looks for gas in Cook Inlet The company has bought acreage in the Susitna Valley in Mental Health Trust and state lease sales Alan Bailey Petroleum News
Canadian company Storm Cat Energy Corp. signaled its intention to explore for gas in Alaska in November 2004 when it purchased two leases in the Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Office lease sale. The leases encompass some 11,800 acres, near Big Lake in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. The company confirmed its interest in Alaska when in May 2005 it purchased eight leases in the state’s Cook Inlet areawide sale area. The state leases are in the same general area as the Mental Health Trust leases.
“The recent (state) acreage we picked up complements the Mental Health Trust acreage, so we’re putting together the acreage position for both conventional gas and coalbed methane,” Scott Zimmerman, president of Storm Cat, told Petroleum News after the state lease sale. “Storm Cat believes in the potential of north Cook Inlet and that we’ll be able to (work) in an environmentally safe and sound manner.”
Rapidly growing company Storm Cat is registered in British Columbia and has offices in Denver, Calgary and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. According to the company’s web site “Storm Cat Energy is a rapidly growing exploration company focusing on developing unconventional natural gas reserves globally.”
Zimmerman used to be vice president of Evergreen Resources, a Denver-based company that had been working a coalbed methane prospect in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. Pioneer Natural Resources bought out Evergreen and subsequently dropped the Mat-Su acreage, to focus on the North Slope.
Storm Cat’s new venture in the Mat-Su Borough will initially focus on finding conventional gas.
“We will probably look first at the conventional possibilities,” Zimmerman told Petroleum News in May. However, the company expects to be able to evaluate coalbed methane potential using the same well that it drills for conventional gas, he said.
The company’s preliminary geological evaluation has identified some promising structures in the area of the leases. And the nearby ARCO BLT well, drilled near Big Lake in 1992, has caught Storm Cat’s attention.
“The old BLT well has a lot of interesting gas shows within it,” Zimmerman said. That’s one of the key wells Storm Cat is looking at, he said.
However, coalbed methane development is a future possibility. Zimmerman is familiar with the recent controversy surrounding this type of development. He thinks that the regulatory framework for coalbed methane in the Matanuska Susitna Borough is inappropriate.
“The borough has not fully understood and has not really done the proper work and the regulations are inappropriate and improper,” he said.
Want to start drilling Storm Cat is using existing seismic data and has assembled a geological team, with a view to start drilling in the winter of 2005-2006.
“We’ve put together our geological team and they’re putting together an evaluation to pick a location to drill some time late third quarter or early fourth quarter (2005),” Zimmerman said in May.
A consulting firm in Anchorage is doing the geological investigation and Storm Cat may itself establish an office in Alaska.
“We do not have an office but we have some consultants working for us and we’re looking at possibly getting an office up there soon,” Zimmerman said.
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