|
Forest to re-enter old west-side Gulf well Company is looking for natural gas where 1969 target was oil; old drill pad some three miles south of 20-inch Enstar gas line Kristen Nelson Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief
Craig Clark, Forest Oil Corp.’s president and chief executive officer, said during an Aug. 9 analysts’ call that the company would participate in two offset wells at Three Mile Creek, operated by 70 percent owner Aurora Gas, and drill “three to five additional tests on other Forest acreage” this year, “depending upon rig availability.”
This is all onshore activity on the west side of Cook Inlet in Southcentral Alaska. Forest operates the Osprey platform at Redoubt Shoal oil field in Cook Inlet, as well as the West McArthur River field which produces oil onshore at West Forelands from an offshore field.
On Aug. 9 Forest applied for one of the projects Clark referred to, a re-entry at the Middle Lake Unit No. 1 well drilled by Gulf Oil Corp. on the west side of Cook Inlet in 1969 in section 22, township 15 north, range 5 west, Seward Meridian. Gulf plugged and abandoned the well in late 1971, Forest said in a plan of operation for the prospect.
Comments are due Sept. 27 on a 50-day Alaska Coastal Management Review, with a final determination expected Oct. 17, the state said Aug. 29. Existing drill site at Middle Lake Middle Lake is on an existing drill site some eight-tenths of a mile inside the eastern boundary of the Susitna Flats State Game Refuge, east of the Little Susitna River.
Forest told the state that Middle Lake “is being evaluated primarily as a natural gas development.” Information from the Gulf well, which was spudded Jan. 30, 1969, and completed April 4, 1969, indicates gassy mud was recovered, but Gulf’s target was oil, and the 9,742-foot well was declared a dry hole.
Clark told analysts early August that “we’ve got as many as five prospects onshore … either tied to past activity or new seismic or leasing. Some of those are actually even deepening using existing well bores for cost savings, but they’re all onshore and the depths range from 5,000 feet to 13,000 feet.”
Forest said in its plan of operations that it will clean out the existing well bore at the Middle Lake Unit well, drill new hole below the 9 5/8-inch casing to an estimated 6,500 feet and test the well for natural gas.
Should the well prove commercially viable, Forest said it would initiate plans for production. The well is some three miles south of the Enstar 20-inch natural gas pipeline which runs from Beluga to Anchorage. Close to existing roads Forest said access to the pad will be from existing roads in the Point McKenzie area, with the existing road system permitting access to within about a mile of the site. From there on, the road requires maintenance, with portions overgrown with vegetation which will need to be removed. Forest said a short soft section of the road will need to be overlain with matting and a short portable bridge will be used to span a narrow fish stream along the road close to the pad.
There is a 202-foot water well northeast of the pad which will be used for drilling. Forest said the well is “currently uncapped and is flowing at a rate of approximately 25 gallons per day.” A submersible electric pump will be used in the well to obtain some 5,000 gallons per day of water needed to make drilling mud; at other times less than 1,000 gallons per day will be needed.
The state said Forest expects to initiate road and pad repair in September, with onsite operations expected to take four to six weeks.
| 