Apache Oil Corp. hopes to start drilling in Alaska next year.
The Houston-based independent plans to begin shooting a 3-D seismic campaign this year across its expanding acreage in the Cook Inlet basin.
“It’s an exploration play but the guys have wowed me enough for me to believe that it’s a real opportunity,” CEO G. Steven Farris said during a conference call on Aug. 4.
He said the company hoped to have completed enough of the shoot by December of this year, and first-pass processing, “and hope to drill a well in 2012.”
Apache arrived in Alaska last summer and through deals since then — and participation in the state’s Cook Inlet oil and gas lease sale in June — has amassed some 800,000 acres in the Cook Inlet region, making it the largest leaseholder in the basin.
Apache recently tested a new wireless nodal seismic technique in the Cook Inlet basin and now plans to conduct a program of seismic surveying. High quality seismic data is the key to exploration in new plays in the basin, Robert Swenson, director of Alaska’s Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, told Petroleum News in June.
Three years of work
Apache will start three years of 3-D seismic acquisition in the Cook Inlet basin this year with a 1,050-square-mile program on the west side of Cook Inlet from West Forelands north to Beluga.
Over the three-year period, the company told the Alaska Department of Natural Resources in an Aug. 3 application, it plans to acquire 3-D seismic from the Susitna Flats in the north to around Anchor Point in the south.
The company conducted a seismic test program this spring to evaluate the feasibility of using new nodal technology seismic recording equipment in the Cook Inlet environment and proposes to begin acquiring seismic this fall with marine patches close to the coast. Apache said that as the ground freezes it will move operations to the transition zone and cover as much of the coastline as possible before sea ice makes marine operations impossible.
Onshore work in winter
Crews will acquire onshore seismic during the winter and at the end of the winter season, depending on ground and sea ice conditions, will resume operations in the transition zone or offshore.
Marine offshore operations will generally take place from April to November, depending on the presence of marine mammals and parameters of the incidental harassment authorization issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Transition zone activities will be from September to December and from March to May, depending on sea ice; onshore operations will be generally from September to April.
Apache said it expects to acquire a broad band, full azimuth seismic dataset capable of imagine structural and stratigraphic features at target depths up to 20,000 feet subsurface across all of the three defined target area.
—Eric Lidji & Kristen Nelson
