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Marathon Oil permitting two new pads at Ninilchik unit If planned Ninilchik State and Abalone exploration wells are successful, gas will be transported by Kenai Kachemak gas pipeline Kristen Nelson PNA Editor-in-Chief
Marathon Oil Co. is permitting two new pads for gas exploration wells at its Ninilchik unit, one — for Ninilchik State wells — some four miles north of Ninilchik and the other for the Abalone well near Clam Gulch.
The 25,000-acre Ninilchik unit was approved by the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas last October. It includes state oil and gas leases straddling the Kenai Peninsula coastline for some 16 miles from near Clam Gulch to just north of Ninilchik.
Marathon has already applied to the state to install production facilities at the existing Grassim Oskolkoff No. 1 well pad some nine miles north of Ninilchik on mile 124 of the Sterling Highway where the company drilled natural gas exploration wells in 2000 and 2001.
In January, Marathon announced “a significant natural gas discovery” at the Ninilchik prospect and said the discovery well, the Grassim Oskolkoff No. 1, tested 11.2 million cubic feet a day of gas from one 39-foot interval. The company said three other wells had been completed on the structure, the Ninilchik anticline, and were awaiting testing, and estimated 90 billion cubic feet of gross proven gas reserves.
Marathon told the state in August that the Susan Dionne No. 3 has recently been completed in the unit.
Marathon has a 60 percent interest in the Ninilchik unit and Unocal Alaska holds the remaining 40 percent. Work on Ninilchik State well to begin in September The pad for the Ninilchik State wells would be in the SW 1/4 NW 1/4 of section 34 T1N-R13W, SM, at approximately Milepost 126.5 of the Sterling Highway near an existing turnoff and private beach access road some four miles north of Ninilchik.
Marathon told the state that work on the pad and access road would begin in September, with drilling in the third or fourth quarter of this year.
Marathon will also drill a new water well on the pad to develop a deep aquifer. The company said this will avoid affecting the shallower aquifers used by private wells. The company will also drill a water well to a deep aquifer at the Abalone pad.
Marathon obtained approval for an exploration well at the Ninilchik State location in 1996, but said it cancelled the drilling program “until further exploratory drilling in the Ninilchik structure could confirm the presence of gas reserves.”
“Based upon the results of recent exploration efforts in this unit the Ninilchik State No. 1 location was reevaluated and determined to be a viable location for drilling a testing separate accumulations within the offshore structure,” Marathon told the state in August.
The company said that a third bottomhole has been added to the locations that can be reached from this proposed pad. Availability of the surface, operational reach of the Marathon Glacier No. 1 drilling rig and the presence of a geologic structure likely to contain gas are the criteria used to select surface locations, Marathon told the state.
The Glacier No. 1 has an effective reach of some 7,000 feet from a pad to the “largely shallow geologic targets within the Ninilchik structure,” the company said.
Three wells, the Ninilchik State No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, are proposed from this pad. Targets for the Ninilchik State No. 1 are in the Lower Beluga and Tyonek formations. Abalone near Clam Gulch The second pad, for the Abalone No. 1, is near Clam Gulch. The company said the Abalone is a name change from Marathon NNA No. 1. The surface location for this pad is owned by Ninilchik Native Association.
Marathon told the state it plans to drill the Abalone in the first quarter of 2003, and said construction of the pad and access road must begin as soon as September in order to meet that drilling schedule.
The pad will be in the SE 1/4 of SW 1/4 of section 29-T2N-R12W, SM, and the well will be directionally drilled to test the northern of the Ninilchik exploration unit.
“If the exploration effort is successful Marathon intends to install and operate production facilities that will provide gas to the Kenai Kachemak Pipeline,” the company told the state.
The company’s plans also show a “proposed satellite production pad” to the north of the drilling pad, also on Ninilchik Native Association lands and also in 29-2N-12W, SM.
“The location will be developed further if sufficient reserves of natural gas are confirmed,” Marathon told the state.
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