Dates extended for work at 3fields, including Narwhal, Hansen
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Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has approved date extensions for work at the Colville River, Cosmopolitan and West McArthur River units. The approvals were issued Jan. 31.
ConocoPhillips Alaska requested an extension of an enhanced recovery injection order for the Narwhal reservoir at the Colville River unit.
The commission said the enhanced recovery injection order was issued in December 2019 authorizing a pilot enhanced oil recovery injection project in the Narwhal reservoir in the Colville River unit, with an expiration date of 3 years after the beginning of injection activity unless it approved an extension.
The injection activity began in February 2020, AOGCC said, with the project planned to involve a full injection pattern - a central horizontal producer with a horizontal injector on either side. To date, only half the pattern is on injection and a 2-year extension will allow time for full pattern injection and sufficient time to collect data from that full pattern injection “so that the feasibility of expanding the EOR project pool wide can be evaluated,” the commission said.
The enhanced recovery injection order has been extended to expire at the end of March 2025, unless an extension is granted.
Cosmopolitan BlueCrest Alaska Operating requested an extension of a gas-oil ratio, GOR, waiver for the Hansen oil pool at Cosmopolitan. A 2019 conservation order granted a waiver to the GOR for the pool to allow collection of performance data to evaluate the feasibility of enhanced oil recovery for the pool. In December 2021, BlueCrest requested a GOR waiver extension to allow it “to acquire reservoir performance and pressure data to help determine the potential for additional reservoir development,” the commission said, and noted that BlueCrest said at that time that EOR did not appear economically viable.
The commission said GOR trends at the Hansen oil pool are “atypical,” as, without enhanced oil recovery pressure maintenance, a producing pool would be expected to “exhibit increasing GOR as time goes by.” The commission said GOR at Hansen peaked in late 2018 and has been generally declining “and is now close to what it was when regular production began in March 2016.” On that basis, a GOR waiver would appear unnecessary, the commission said, but then noted that news reports - Petroleum News was cited - indicate BlueCrest plans to resume drilling this year. The Trident Fishbone well would have three main horizontal wellbores with multiple laterals branching from each. Because it is uncertain how such a well will perform over time, extending the GOR waiver to allow for drilling and completion of the well and gathering further reservoir performance data is prudent.
The GOR waiver is extended through the end of 2023, “so that reservoir performance may be gathered to evaluate the viability of implementing an enhanced oil recovery project in the Hansen Oil Pool,” the commission said.
West McArthur River Cook Inlet Energy requested confirmation from the commission that a disposal injection order issued last March was still in effect. The disposal injection order, DIO 43.001, was set to expire Nov. 12, 2022, unless disposal operations commenced.
CIE is performing work, the commission said, including “injectivity step rate tests designed to evaluate the authorized disposal zone.” AOGCC said it “believes these are good faith efforts towards the commencement of disposal operations” under the disposal order, and has changes the expiration date to “two years after injection operations authorized in that order conclude.”
- KRISTEN NELSON
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