Marathon looking at Wolf Lake line

Marathon Oil Co. has reported to the state that it has found gas at an exploratory well on the Kenai Peninsula. Marathon re-entered an old ARCO/CIRI well, the Wolf Lake, to look for gas. Marathon completed the 2 Wolf Lake Nov. 1 as a gas well with a 13,391 foot measured depth and a 13,039 foot true vertical depth.

“We did test some gas and we’re really looking now at a plan of development for that prospect which involves getting pipeline to there and we’re working with the subsurface lease owner CIRI and government agencies to expedite that,” John Miesse, Marathon’s Alaska exploitation manager, told PNA Dec. 17. A pipeline will be required, he said, for long-term testing. The company is not releasing any volumes from the testing that has been done.

The Wolf Lake well, like the Beaver Creek and Swanson River fields, lies within the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, Miesse said. Marathon is working with federal agencies on potential routes.

Miesse told PNA in July that when ARCO drilled the Wolf Lake well they were “primarily looking for Hemlock oil. And they didn’t find it. And they didn’t test anything else.” Marathon was looking “at some gas zones up the hole from the Hemlock in the Beluga and Tyonek formations,” he said.

The well is south of the Swanson River field on Cook Inlet Region Inc. land. This is part of a larger deal that Marathon has with CIRI on the Kenai Peninsula.

“It’s a fairly new agreement,” Miesse said, signed at the end of last year, and involves some of CIRI’s lands on the Kenai Peninsula.