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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
December 2018

Vol. 23, No 51 Week of December 23, 2018

Drilling completed

Kitchen Lights POD approval indicates Furie carried out its 2018 program

Alan Bailey

Petroleum News

Furie Operating Alaska completed its planned 2018 drilling program in the Kitchen Lights unit, offshore in Cook Inlet, according to a state notice approving the company’s latest plan of development. In 2017 Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas had issued the company a notice of default and opportunity to cure, because, the division said, the company had failed to meet drilling and development commitments. But, in this new plan approval, issued on Dec. 11, the division said that, with Furie now having complied with its commitments, the division was curing the default. Last January Furie had questioned the original default finding.

Drilling conducted

The approval document says that this year Furie re-entered and completed the KLU A-1 development well in the Kitchen Lights gas field, and drilled an additional development well, the KLU No. 4. The company also drilled an exploration tail to this well, down into the Tyonek formation, to test a seismic anomaly there for potential gas - the exploration tail had not been required under the plan of development for the unit. Drilling was conducted using the Spartan 151 jack-up drilling rig, cantilevered over the Julius R offshore production platform.

Additional work conducted in 2018 included adding perforations in the Beluga formation to the KLU No. 3 well and closing perforations at a shallower depth in that well. The work program included the replacement, upgrading and repair of some equipment on the platform; the installation of sand monitors on each producing well flowline; and conducting a cathodic protection survey to test the integrity of the subsea pipeline that carries produced gas to shore. Furie also conducted repair and maintenance work on the gas dehydration system, in the onshore production facility for the Kitchen Lights field, the division approval document says.

The Kitchen Lights field has been producing gas from the KLU No. 3 and KLU No. A-2A wells. Completion of the A-1 and A-4 wells will presumably allow the field to produce from four wells, a contractual requirement for Furie’s gas supply agreement with Enstar Natural gas Co., the main gas utility in Southcentral Alaska. The Julius R. platform has six well slots.

Plan for next year

The approval document says that for 2019 Furie has committed to acquire the logs and data necessary to evaluate the possibility of drilling a fifth development well from the platform, and to present a plan for that well to the division. Depending on the results of data interpretations, the additional well would likely target the stratigraphic equivalents of Sterling formation zones flow tested in the KLU No. 3 well. The company has also committed to conduct development operations, including the adding of new perforations, in the KLU No. A-2A and KLU No. 3 wells.

Furie would also like to drill additional exploration wells in the Kitchen Lights unit but, to do this requires additional financing and the payment of state tax credits it is owed, the approval document says. By February 2019 the company plans to mature two prospects outside the Corsair block of the unit, and to present the results to the division, together with evidence that reasonable efforts are underway to drill these wells in 2019 or 2020. The unit is divided into four blocks, all offshore in the Cook Inlet, with development drilling for the Kitchen Lights field taking place in the Corsair block.

It its new plan of development Furie has also committed to submit by March 1 a proposal for the establishment of a participating area or areas in the unit.






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