Buccaneer permitted to drill at Cosmo

Buccaneer Energy Ltd. is now fully permitted to drill at the Cosmopolitan prospect.

After a successful inspection of its jack-up drilling rig from the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, a local subsidiary of the Australian independent is now preparing to spud its first well at the offshore prospect off the coast of Anchor Point.

Cosmopolitan No. 1 will be drilled vertically to 8,000 feet, according to Buccaneer.

Buccaneer plans to set surface casing at 800 feet and set intermediate casing at 2,000 feet, at the top of the Tyonek formation, where it expects to encounter multiple Tyonek gas-bearing zones down to 6,000 feet. The company plans to set casing again at 6,100 feet before drilling through the oil bearing Starichkof, Hemlock and West Foreland Formations. “The current plan is to core each of these oil formations to gather additional reservoir data so as to design the future development program for the oil formations. At this stage it is not planned to flow test the oil formations,” Buccaneer said in a statement.

Buccaneer expects the well to take between 40 and 45 days to drill.

Buccaneer originally intended the start drilling at Cosmopolitan last year, but was delayed when its Endeavour jack-up rig was docked in Homer for several months.

Buccaneer operates the Cosmopolitan prospect, and owns a 25 percent interest in the leases. The privately owned BlueCrest Energy II, LP owns the remaining 75 percent.

—Eric Lidji