BlueCrest applies for Cosmopolitan IHA

BlueCrest Operating Alaska has applied to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for an incidental harassment authorization approving the minor disturbance of sea otters during offshore drilling at the Cosmopolitan field, in the Cook Inlet, off Anchor Point in the southern Kenai Peninsula. BlueCrest wants to use the Spartan 151 jack-up drilling rig to drive wells into shallow gas and oil pools above the main oil reservoir at Cosmopolitan. The company has been developing the main oil resources in the field using extended reach drilling from onshore, but the shallow reservoirs require offshore drilling.

According to BlueCrest’s application to Fish and Wildlife, the company wants to use the Spartan rig to drill two directional wells from the same offshore location as that of the Cosmopolitan No. 1 well, drilled by Buccaneer Energy in 2013. BlueCrest also wants to drill a third well from a surface location about one mile southeast of the other wells. The first two wells would test gas layers while the third well “would be drilled into oil formations to collect geological information,” BlueCrest’s application says.

BlueCrest has indicated recently that, although the company wants to develop shallow gas at Cosmopolitan, the company has not yet decided on whether to proceed with this option. Company President and CEO Benjamin Johnson told the Alaska House Rules Committee on May 11 that the gas project was on hold because of uncertainty over long-term gas demand in the region and over state tax credits. Presumably BlueCrest has applied for the incidental harassment authorization to have the approved document in hand, should the project go ahead.

If development of the gas at Cosmopolitan does proceed, the development would involve the installation of one or more offshore production platforms, BlueCrest has said. The concept behind aligning the surface locations of the two planned gas development wells with the location of Cosmopolitan No. 1 is the future possibility of hooking up these wells for gas production through a single platform, the application says.

- ALAN BAILEY