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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
May 2008

Vol. 13, No. 19 Week of May 11, 2008

Pacific Energy to drill Escopeta’s onshore Cook Inlet gas prospect

Pacific Energy Resources will be the operator for Escopeta Oil’s 2008-09 winter drilling program at the North Alexander exploration unit in Alaska’s Cook Inlet basin, Escopeta President Danny Davis and Pacific Energy Chairman and CEO Vladimir Katic told Petroleum News.

“We think we each have about 50 percent of the reservoir,” Davis said, noting he expects the reservoir to hold about 100 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

“We have adjoining leases there, so it makes sense we operate the exploration, since we already operate in Cook Inlet and Escopeta does not. … We’ll position the well along seismic lines; it’s a common structure so we can test both at the same time,” Katic said.

Davis also said that all the permitting for North Alexander has been completed, and that it was done by former state Division of Oil and Gas employee Bruce Webb.

The North Alexander onshore prospect sits along the mouth of the Susitna River in the upper Cook Inlet basin, across the inlet from the Kenai Peninsula and some 13 miles north of Beluga. The North Alexander No. 1 well, planned as an 8,500-foot vertical hole, will target gas producing sandstones in the Beluga and Upper Tyonek formations, Escopeta said.

The well site is about 6.5 miles northeast of the Lewis River unit, just south of Mount Susitna, about 1.5 miles west of the Susitna River on a low, southeast-facing ridge at 55 feet above sea level in low shrub and mixed lowland forest. The closest existing wells are Lewis River 1-A, six miles to the southwest, and Isla Grande 1, some 2.5 miles to the southeast.

Escopeta’s 22,882-acre North Alexander prospect is onshore on four state oil and gas leases within the Susitna Flats State Game Refuge; both surface and subsurface mineral estates are state owned. Escopeta maintains a 75 percent working interest in the unit, formed in early 2007, with Taylor Minerals holding the remaining 25 percent.

The North Alexander unit terms had originally required Escopeta to drill a well in the winter of 2007-08, holding leases which would otherwise have expired in January 2007. But the state Division of Oil and Gas Division extended the drilling date to March 31, 2009, Davis said.

A rig from Aurora Well Services will be used to drill the prospect. “It’s an excellent company. We’re glad to be working with them,” Davis said.

—Eric Lidji & Kay Cashman






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