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AOGCC changes Beaver Creek well spacing Hilcorp requested changes for gas wells at Kenai Peninsula field; increase in vertical depth of Beluga gas pool previously approved By KRISTEN NELSON Petroleum News
As Hilcorp Alaska Inc. works on properties it acquired in Cook Inlet from Chevron and Marathon, it has requested and received some rule changes from the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
Most recently, the commission made changes in gas well spacing requirements Hilcorp requested for the Sterling and Beluga gas pools at Beaver Creek north of Kenai on the Kenai Peninsula.
The commission said 160-acre spacing has been required for gas wells at the field, and a distance of 1,320 feet from the nearest open wellbore in the same pool, spacing requirements which were established in 1988 based on geological and reservoir information available at that time. Production began at Beaver Creek in 1972. In 1988 there were four wells at the field producing gas.
Marathon, the previous field operator, drilled 10 wells after the pool rules were established, resulting in a better understanding of the Sterling and Beluga gas pools.
The commission said that, as is common in the Cook Inlet basin, gas pools in the Beaver Creek unit “are comprised of discontinuous sand lenses that were deposited in a braided to meandering stream environment and thus there is little lateral continuity between individual sands within the defined gas pools.”
Issue ‘efficient development’ “Information gathered since 1988 demonstrates that the existing well spacing requirements for the Sterling and Beluga Gas Pools prevent efficient development” of the Beaver Creek unit, the commission said.
In a June 18 ruling the commission said it will not restrict gas well spacing in the Sterling and Beluga gas pools, “except that no pay shall be opened in a well within 1,500 feet from the exterior boundary of the Beaver Creek Unit where owners and landowners are not the same on both sides of the line,” protecting correlative rights.
Spacing for the Beaver Creek oil pool remains at 40 acres, as established in 1988, along with the restriction of no wellbore within 660 feet of the nearest open wellbore and no wellbore within 500 feet of the Beaver Creek unit boundary where owners and landowners are not the same on both sides of the line.
Vertical expansion The commission has approved two other recent changes at Beaver Creek.
In March it approved a Hilcorp request to produce a single gas well closer than 1,320 feet from the nearest wellbore and said in its order that the well would “recover reserves that are not accessible to existing development gas wells” and that development of the well was “consistent with sound engineering and geoscience principles.”
In April the commission approved a vertical expansion of the Beluga gas pool, based on revisions Hilcorp made to geologic and reservoir description which identified “productive and potentially productive sands” within the Beluga but between the Sterling and Beluga gas pool as defined in the 1988 pool rules for the field.
In its application for the vertical expansion Hilcorp said it plans up to six well workovers and eight new wells or sidetracks at Beaver Creek within the next few years. Hilcorp told the commission production at Beaver Creek peaked in December 1985 at 10,067 barrels of oil for the month and 1,588 million cubic feet of natural gas, dropping to 4,732 barrels of oil and 175 million cubic feet of natural gas in January 2014.
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