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Marathon’s Barnes sees technology-driven opportunities in Cook Inlet basin Prospects drilled for oil in the 1960s reentered for gas as companies look at gasline on southern Kenai Peninsula By Kristen Nelson PNA Editor-in-Chief
Marathon Oil Co. is putting one new gas field into production, with gas slated to begin flowing this fall, reentering a 1961 exploration well and permitting a second exploration well in an area where the company drilled late last year.
The new gas field — Wolf Lake — should be producing by fall.
Marathon’s Alaska region manager, John Barnes, told PNA June 27 that Marathon is working on production facilities at Wolf Lake.
“The pipeline’s in. It’s just a matter of getting everything hooked up and commissioned,” he said.
Wolf Lake will be the newest Marathon-operated gas field on the Kenai Peninsula, where the company operates the Beaver Creek, Cannery Loop, Falls Creek (shut-in), Kenai and Sterling gas fields.
Marathon is installing primary separation and control equipment at the Wolf Lake well site, Barnes said: “The gas will go to the Beaver Creek field for ultimate processing and transportation.”
Wolf Lake will be the first new gas field to come on in quite some time on the Kenai Peninsula where most of the gas fields brought on recently have produced in the past and are now being reworked.
Marathon reentered an old exploration well at Wolf Lake in 1998 and then a 16-month environmental impact study process followed. The pipeline was installed this past winter. There could be additional drilling at the Wolf Lake field. “We’ll look at well performance to decide how to schedule additional activities,” Barnes said.
And there are other opportunities in the Wolf Lake area, including the Mosquito Lake prospect which was included in the EIS. Development drilling at Kenai gas field Barnes said Marathon has had an active development drilling program, including a well at Beaver Creek and an ongoing work over program in the Kenai gas field.
“I guess probably the most notable thing at Kenai would be the Excape completions — we’ve completed half of the first well and we’re very pleased with the results. We’re looking at completing the remainder of that well and a second Excape well before the end of summer.”
The Excape completion technology was developed specifically for the Kenai gas field and the Beluga formation. Marathon has also designed and purchased a truck-mounted rig, the Glacier 1, specifically built for work on the Kenai Peninsula.
Barnes said this new technology — doing things differently than they were done 20 years ago, is crucial.
“I remain convinced that there are opportunities in the inlet, both on the exploration and the development side. It will all be driven on technology.” Current exploration work Marathon drilled the 1 Grassim Oskolkoff at Ninilchik late last year and results on that exploration well have not been released, Barnes said. Marathon has begun permitting a second well at the prospect.
Marathon is also working over a shut-in well at Falls Creek.
Falls Creek is south of Clam Gulch. The discovery well was drilled by Chevron in 1961 and has been suspended since.
“It still is a shut-in field,” Barnes said. “There’s a well there; we’re working it over.”
Falls Creek is not served by a pipeline and Barnes said Marathon has been looking at pipeline possibilities in the area. There is also, he said, a consortium looking at a pipeline (Homer Electric Association, Enstar and Unocal).
“So there are a couple of proposals out there on a pipeline. But ultimately,” he said, “only one pipeline will be built.”
The first step is to find out how much gas there is: “As with most developments of that sort, your focus is trying to understand your resource base to make your pipeline decision. And that’s what you’re seeing going on there now and probably for some period of time to come,” he said. Revisiting old data Barnes said that the Falls Creek well was drilled as part of early wildcat exploration on the Kenai, looking for deep oil. When oil wasn’t found, the companies didn’t pursue the prospects. But the information remained.
And now, he said, “you go back, you look at your data again more closely and maybe find some more gas, similar to what we did at Wolf Lake.”
There are different types of exploration, Barnes said: “You go out and you do seismic where no one else has drilled — rank wildcat exploration. And then there’s the more exploitation-type work, where you’re working an existing database looking for new opportunities. While the Cook Inlet probably has both opportunities, Marathon’s current activities are focused on exploitation.”
Eventually, Barnes said, more wildcat exploration will probably be done in the area, but right now there’s a database that’s been accumulated of what’s in the Cook Inlet basin area, and that’s what Marathon is using to find gas prospects like Wolf Lake and Falls Creek.
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