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Seismic to be shot in Forest’s Susitna basin license area
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief
Veritas DGC has applied to the state of Alaska to shoot 2-D and 3-D seismic this winter in the Susitna basin west of the Susitna River.
The Alaska Office of Project Management and Permitting said Nov. 4 that work is planned between mid-December 2004 and April 2005 between the Yenlo Hills and Beluga Mountain to the west and the Susitna River and Parks Highway to the east. The general area is between township 25 north, range 11 west, Seward Meridian, and T25N-R5W on the north and T19N-R11W and T19N-R5W on the south.
This is the area where Forest Oil holds two exploration licenses, both issued in September 2003 by the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas for seven-year terms. The licenses may be extended for three years if the initial work commitment has been completed; the licensee commits to an additional work commitment of $5 million; and has a relinquishment plan approved by the division.
License 1, the more northerly of the contiguous license areas, covers 386,207 acres and has a work commitment of $2.52 million. License 2, to the south, covers 471,747 acres and has a work commitment of $3 million.
The license areas lie west of the Susitna River northwest of Wasilla.
The state of Alaska’s exploration license program requires that, in addition to annual rent for the area, the applicant commit to the dollar amount of work it plans to evaluate the area. Area not extensively explored The division said in its best interest finding for the Susitna basin exploration licenses that the basin “has not been extensively explored.” There have been nine oil and gas exploration wells and four core holes in the region, the division said, with all of the exploration holes plugged and abandoned as dry holes, “though some did have minor gas shows.”
Two wells drilled near the deepest part of the basin, the 1964 Union Texas Pure Kahiltna Unit No. 1 and the 1980 Unocal Trail Ridge Unit No. 1, bottom in what the state said was “possibly the Talkeetna formation, volcanic rocks,” at 7,265 feet in the first well and 13,708 feet in the second. The state said coal beds were prominent in the lower part of both wells, “suggesting a correlation with the coal-bearing formations in the Cook Inlet basin that produce natural gas.”
The Union Texas Pure Kahiltna well is approximately in the middle of the border between the two license areas; the Unocal Trail Ridge well is about midway down the western boundary of license 2, the more southerly of the two licenses.
“The Susitna basin has low to moderate petroleum potential,” the state said.
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