During a presentation to the Alaska Senate Resources Committee on Wednesday, Damon Kade, president of Furie Operating Alaska (formerly Escopeta Oil) told the committee that his company now estimates the gas resource encountered last year by the Kitchen Lights Unit No. 1 well, drilled from the Spartan 151 jack-up rig, amounts to a probable gas reserve of 750 billion cubic feet in a 3,200-acre prospect, with a potential gas production rate of up to 30 million cubic feet per day.
Those figures are substantially lower than the 3.5 trillion cubic feet of gas that Escopeta announced in November for the prospect. That 3.5 tcf figure met with skepticism from some people in the oil industry at the time of the announcement. The gas find is in the relatively shallow Beluga and Sterling formations, Kade said.
Furie’s well reached a depth of just 8,805 feet before the company suspended the well for the winter. The company plans to re-enter the well in May to drill deeper, into the pre-Tertiary rocks of the Cook Inlet basin, with the potential for further gas and possibly oil in the deeper horizons, Kade said. The company also plans to drill a second well in the same area this year, eventually converting one of the wells into a gas production well. The company is moving forward with plans to install a monopod platform in 2013 for gas production, Kade said.
See story in April 1 issue, available online Friday, March 30 at 11 a.m. at www.PetroleumNews.com
