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Vol. 21, No. 46 Week of November 13, 2016
Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry

Producers 2016: BlueCrest brings Cosmopolitan online

After five operators and nearly half a century, BlueCrest makes it work

ERIC LIDJI

For Petroleum News

The Cosmopolitan unit needed the right company at the right time.

Earlier this year, BlueCrest Energy Operating LLC started producing oil at the Cook Inlet field after five previous operators over 49 years were unable to make the project work.

Its predecessors included integrated oil companies, large independents and small independents. Oil prices were high, low and in between over that half a century.

BlueCrest succeeded through a combination of previous activities by former operators, a limited scope of work for the time being and external assistance from public agencies.

From its inception, the small privately held company based out of Fort Worth was focused primarily on Cosmopolitan, which reduced internal competition for resources.

BlueCrest was also helped in its effort by two state programs. The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority partly financed a jack-up rig used to drill an initial exploration well at the offshore unit, and the Alaska Department of Revenue provided tax credits that offset some of that exploration activity, reducing the cost of the project.

Having brought the Cosmopolitan unit into production from an existing well, BlueCrest is now focusing on development work. By summer, the company had brought a custom-built land-based drilling rig to the Kenai Peninsula and was starting to permit extended reach development wells from a 38-acre onshore drill site north of Anchor Point.

BlueCrest plans to drill as many as five wells and laterals in early 2017. In August 2016, the company received an Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission drilling permit for the H-16 well. The company expects to request drilling permits for the H-14, H-14L, H-12 and H-12L wells and associated laterals early next year, according to the plan of development. The drilling program will begin as soon as BlueCrest finishes building the BlueCrest Rig No. 1. The work is occurring on site and is expected to be complete by the end of the year. The company is also permitting a disposal well to be drilled after the development program is finished. A second disposal well is likely at some undetermined point in the future.

The production facilities at Cosmopolitan can accommodate 20 wells and process as much as 10,000 barrels per day. Although the existing well was producing only 250 bpd by early July, the company believes it will reach capacity in time. The initial well, according to BlueCrest, is in a less productive section of the prospect. The large grounds around the facility can accommodate expansion, if production warrants.

As BlueCrest drills horizontal oil wells, the company is also planning ahead to the possibility of developing gas from a separate reservoir above the oil accumulation. With the demand for gas in Cook Inlet currently satisfied, and tax credits curtailed, BlueCrest recently suspended those plans and cancelled a federal permitting application.

Before those tax credits were curtailed, BlueCrest President J. Benjamin Johnson said, “The main benefit of the tax credits to us is that they would allow us to continue developing Cosmopolitan at a lower oil price, at about $10 a barrel lower price, in fact.”

The unusual life of Cosmopolitan left a short production history before BlueCrest brought the field into production. The field had produced 33,504 barrels of oil by the start of 2016, and produced 20,931 barrels through the first six months of the year for cumulative production of 54,435 barrels by the end of June 2016, according to the AOGCC.

Five predecessors

The story of Cosmopolitan offers insights into the history of the Cook Inlet market.

Using a jack-up rig, Pennzoil discovered the prospect in 1967 with the 12,112-foot vertical Starichkof State No. 1 discovery well and the down-dip Starichkof State Unit No. 1 well. Although the wells encountered oil, the results of those wells were uninspiring.

In addition to geologic risk, the southern Kenai Peninsula was beyond the terminus of the Cook Inlet distribution system at the time, which further challenged the project.

ARCO Alaska acquired the prospect in the 1990s, and Phillips Inc. inherited the leases after it acquired ARCO’s producing assets in Alaska in early 2000 for $7 billion.

By the turn of the century, improvements in drilling technologies allowed Phillips to target the offshore prospect from an onshore pad, some 2.5 miles away, using directional wells. The Hansen No. 1 exploration well from 2001 confirmed the presence of oil in the Starichkof sands and also discovered productive sands in the deeper Hemlock formation.

In 2003, after a merger, ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc. drilled the Hansen No. 1A sidetrack of the original well. The sidetrack targeted the Starichkof and Hemlock reservoirs. A subsequent flow test produced 1,000 barrels of oil per day and 14,851 cumulative barrels.

Even though the prospect remained beyond the existing distribution grid, one royalty owner made the case for trucking oil north to existing refineries. But the state disagreed, saying that ConocoPhillips needed further delineation work to prove up the prospect.

By 2005, ConocoPhillips and Pioneer Natural Resources were working together on a range of exploration projects across the North Slope. Cosmopolitan provided an opportunity to extend the partnership to Cook Inlet. A joint 3-D seismic program “provided a clear view of the perimeter flanks of an anticlinal structure, but the crestal view of the structure was obscured by a gas cloud, rendering a conclusive description of the reservoir structure unobtainable at the time,” according to filings from BlueCrest.

After the companies dissolved their partnership, Pioneer acquired ConocoPhillips’ interest in Cosmopolitan and became operator of the field. Even though Pioneer was nervous about being so far from existing infrastructure, the promise of a resource estimated in the range of 30 million to 100 million barrels convinced the company to drill Hansen No. 1A-L1, a “long-reach undulating lateral” off of the sidetrack, in 2007.

Between early 2004 and late 2007, the average spot price of Alaska North Slope crude oil increased from $33.10 to $88.63 per barrel and would eventually peak above $130 per barrel in mid-2008, when Pioneer brought the Oooguruk unit online on the North Slope.

When global oil prices collapsed in late 2008, Pioneer Natural Resources maintained its operations at Oooguruk but slowed its investment at Cosmopolitan. The company fracture stimulated an interval at Hansen No. 1A-L1 in 2010 and an extended flow-test produced 250 bpd. Under a pilot program to truck Cosmopolitan oil to the Tesoro refinery to the north, Pioneer produced more than 33,000 barrels from the field.

As the nearby North Fork unit was nearing production in late 2010 and early 2011, the associated infrastructure improved the economics of producing natural gas from Cosmopolitan. Pioneer continued to focus on oil, even going so far as to proposing a full-scale development program. But in early 2011, the company soured on the project, terminated the unit and relinquished all its leases except the two that were held by wells, which it sold to BlueCrest and its operating partner Buccaneer Energy Ltd. Pioneer soon left Alaska entirely to focus on unconventional oil opportunities in the Lower 48.

Apache Alaska Corp. bought the remaining leases but later sold them to the Buccaneer and BlueCrest partnership when it, like Pioneer, decided to back away from Alaska. The company had faced disappointing well results at other fields and long regulatory delays.

After drilling the Cosmopolitan No. 1 well, Buccaneer announced previously unknown oil-bearing intervals, and some gas production, too, but postponed a “more extensive flow test.” Before it could drill a follow-up well, Buccaneer sold its minority stake in the Cosmopolitan prospect to BlueCrest in an attempt to improve its financial situation by selling off some of its varied Alaska assets. Soon after, Buccaneer filed for bankruptcy.



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