Moving the assetsFurie prepares for gas production platform installation at Kitchen Lights Alan Bailey Petroleum News
With winter coming to an end, Furie Operating Alaska has started setting up and moving the various assets the company needs to install the production platform and associated subsea pipeline for its Kitchen Lights natural gas field offshore in Cook Inlet.
The platform, of monopod design, will be installed some 10 miles northwest of Boulder Point, near Nikiski on the Kenai Peninsula. The subsea pipeline, about 16 miles in length, will carry natural gas from the platform to an onshore gas processing plant near East Foreland. Utility-grade gas from the plant will be delivered by pipeline into the nearby Kenai Peninsula gas pipeline infrastructure. In transitioning from the seafloor to the onshore facility, the pipeline will pass through a directionally drilled borehole that runs under the coastal bluff.
Furie hopes to be in a position to test the installed platform and the onshore facility in late August or early September, with first gas coming on line on Oct. 1, Bruce Webb, Furie senior vice president, told Petroleum News in an April 30 email. The company has previously said that it hopes to secure gas supply contracts that would support an initial production rate of 85 million cubic feet per day.
Heavy lift vessel The MV Svenja heavy lift vessel that will be used for platform installation is expected to arrive in Cook Inlet from Singapore around May 15, depending on the weather, Webb said. After setting anchor, the vessel must set in place the seafloor template used to position the platform.
The platform itself should depart Seattle around May 10 for transportation by barge to Cook Inlet, where it should arrive around May 25. The platform has been stored in Seattle for the winter.
“If everything goes well with the mooring of the Svenja, we should start setting the main support caisson the week of May 25th,” Webb said.
A barge that will lay the subsea gas gathering pipeline from the platform had been docked at the Northstar Terminal near the Port of Anchorage for the installation of the stinger, the device needed to support the pipeline during the pipe laying operation, Webb said. With the barge scheduled to depart Anchorage on April 30 to move to the planned pipeline location, the pipe laying should start around May 10, he said.
Last year Furie staged the cement-coated piping for the pipeline at Port MacKenzie, near Anchorage. The company is borrowing a vessel from Hilcorp Alaska to transport the pipeline sections from Port MacKenzie to the pipe laying barge, Webb said.
Borehole from shore Webb said that Furie plans to use its Spartan 151 jack-up drilling rig to pull the shore section of the pipeline through the borehole from the onshore facility. The horizontal directional drilling of the borehole from the onshore end began last year and will now continue. However, Furie will position drilling units both onshore and on the jack-up rig, to enable drilling and pipeline pushing and pulling at both ends of the borehole, Webb said.
The jack-up rig has been moved from its overwinter staging location at Port Graham in readiness for these operations. Use of the jack-up rather than a barge for the offshore activities will eliminate the complications of avoiding the snagging of subsea fiber optic cables or an existing subsea gas line when anchoring and mooring a floating vessel, Webb explained.
Construction of the onshore facility began last year and is now about 90 percent complete, Webb said.
Large gas field Initial development of the Kitchen Lights field will use the Kitchen Lights No. 3 well that Furie drilled in 2013 in the Corsair block of the Kitchen Lights unit using the Spartan 151 rig. The company reported finding multiple productive gas pools in the Sterling and Beluga formations at depths ranging from 3,618 feet to 6,228 feet. The field was originally discovered in 2011 when Escopeta Oil Co., Furie’s forerunner company, drilled the nearby Kitchen Lights No. 1 well. Following an initial claim of finding a massive gas resource, Furie has since been reticent about making public statements about the scale of its find. However, the company’s development plan for the field envisages the possibility of two 100 million cubic feet per day gathering lines from the field, if purchase contracts for the gas can be established.
Webb has previously told Petroleum News that an evaluation of the field had indicated that production could continue for 11 to 15 years. However, that estimate was based on proved and producible gas reserves - Furie plans to drill a couple of wells from the Kitchen Lights platform to prove out further reserves. The Spartan 151 rig, cantilevered over the platform, would conduct the delineation and development drilling.
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