Escopeta Oil Co. said early this evening that it had discovered approximately 3.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, in place, in the Sterling and Beluga formations in its Kitchen Lights unit in upper Cook Inlet.
The Kitchen Lights Unit No. 1 well was drilled to a depth of 8,805 feet using the Spartan 151 jack‐up drilling rig, resulting in the discovery of 46.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas from the well, Bruce D. Webb, Escopeta’s vice president of governmental and regulatory affairs, said in a press release.
Due to seasonal drilling restrictions in Cook Inlet, Escopeta made the decision to suspend the drilling and re‐enter the well next year to drill to the total depth of approximately 16,500 feet, which will penetrate the Jurassic formation.
“Escopeta utilized Schlumberger well logging tools while drilling the well. These tools enabled the company to determine the exact depth of the natural gas‐bearing formations. The gas shows were very impressive,” Webb said.
After drilling to 8,805 feet a “series of sophisticated logs were run in the well bore to further delineate the natural gas accumulations. These logs were then analyzed by NuTech, an industry leader in oil and gas well log analysis. Based on the NuTech log analysis of gas‐in‐place, there is a total of 670 feet of net producible sands within the Sterling and Beluga formations” at the KLU No. 1 well, and “those sands contain approximately 536,000 cubic feet per acre, 536 MCF per acre,” Webb said.
From geophysical interpretations, the productive sands around the well extend to more than 6,500 acres, he said.
When Escopeta begins drilling again in the spring, it will drill down through the Tyonek gas formations, and then into the Sunfish and Hemlock oil formations, on the way to the Jurassic. KLU No. 1 is the first of five wells currently planned in the Kitchen Lights unit.
“The results from just the top half of our first well are sufficient to commence planning and engineering for commercial gas production,” Webb said.
Escopeta is “currently in the preliminary design stages of an accelerated natural gas development scenario that could bring new gas deliverability to the Cook Inlet as early as 2013,” he said.
—Kay Cashman
See full story in Nov. 13 issue, available online at 11 a.m., Friday, Nov. 11 at www.PetroleumNews.com
