The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, has published a draft version of a pollutant discharge permit for the natural gas production platform that Furie plans to install in its Kitchen Lights unit, offshore in the Cook Inlet. The draft permit has been prepared for review by Furie — a subsequent draft will be published later for public review and comment.
In 2011 Furie announced a major gas find in its Kitchen Lights unit No. 1 well, drilled using the Spartan 151 jack-up rig. Since then the company has drilled two more wells in the unit and has embarked on the drilling of a fourth well. In March 2012 the company told the state Legislature that the find was estimated to have probable gas reserves of 750 billion cubic feet, with a potential production rate of up to 30 million cubic feet per day. But since then the company has remained tight-lipped about the size and nature of its find.
According to a statement of discovery filed by Furie with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources in July, the Kitchen Lights unit no. 3 well, which Furie completed and tested this summer, encountered multiple productive gas pools in the Sterling and Beluga formations at depths ranging from 3,618 feet to 6,228 feet. Modular dynamic log tests were conducted on 28 pools and six pools were flow tested, the statement says.
Platform in 2014
The company has said that it plans to install a platform to develop a Kitchen Light unit gas field in 2014, with the possibility of gas production starting by the end of that year. In March of this year Damon Kade, president of Furie, told Petroleum News that his company had already done “a lot of permitting” for the platform, including obtaining a Corps of Engineers permit.
According to the draft permit from DEC, seafloor construction of the platform, designated the KLU#1 Platform A, is expected to start “as early as April 2014,” with wastewater discharges from the platform anticipated in August 2014. The maximum personnel capacity of the platform is 24, the permit says.
Although domestic wastewater and deck drainage storm water will be discharged into the sea from the platform, Furie plans to transfer onshore for disposal materials such as used drilling fluids, used drilling mud, well treatment fluids and other waste resulting from gas development and production, the draft permit says.
Furie estimates that its gas development project will generate 97 full-time and 62 part-time job positions in 2014, with those numbers rising to 113 full-time and 56 part-time positions in 2015 and beyond, the permit says.
In previous government agency filings Furie described the planned platform as being monopod in design, with a 64.5-foot by 72-foot deck, living quarters, a helideck and a 100-foot boom crane. The Spartan rig would be cantilevered over the platform for the drilling of development wells.
Two subsea 10-inch pipelines would connect the platform to onshore facilities on the nearby Kenai Peninsula, with those facilities being connected by an onshore 12-inch pipeline to the existing Kenai Peninsula gas infrastructure north of Nikiski.
—Alan Bailey
