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Forest Oil focusing on onshore gas
Kristen Nelson
Most people don’t realize that Forest Oil has more acreage onshore in Alaska — more than a million acres — than it does offshore in Cook Inlet, Craig Clark, Forest’s president and chief executive officer, said in a conference call with analysts Nov. 4.
Forest operates the offshore Redoubt Shoal oil field in Cook Inlet, which produces from the company’s Osprey platform, and the West McArthur River oil field, an offshore accumulation produced from a westside onshore drill site. The company also has working interests in Unocal-operated Cook Inlet oil properties, and a small working interest ownership position on the North Slope.
In addition to state oil and gas leases, 118,031 net acres primarily in the Cook Inlet basin, Forest holds three exploration licenses, two in the Susitna basin, north of Cook Inlet, and one in the Interior Copper River basin. The Susitna licenses, one 386,207 acres and the other 471,474 acres, were issued Nov. 1, 2003, and have seven-year terms, with a combined work commitment of $5.52 million.
The Copper River basin license, 398,445 acres, was issued Oct. 1, 2000, has a five-year term and a $1.42 million work commitment.
“Seismic acquisition has now occurred at Three Mile Creek, Susitna basin and Copper River,” Clark said. Exploration funds for gas on north side Alaska exploration spending Forest has planned is on gas projects, “on the north side of the inlet, where there’s a pipeline connection.”
Forest has spud a West Foreland gas test onshore on the north side of the inlet, Clark said, and the Three Mile Creek exploratory test, in which Forest has a 30 percent interest, will spud, possibly later this year.
Forest also has work planned at Redoubt, he said. “We plan to use our West Foreland rig offshore at Redoubt to do repairs to make the waterflood injection conversion. As noted earlier, Alaska remains a good cash-flow generator this year.”
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