State OKs Ninilchik unit Kalotsa pad

KRISTEN NELSON

Petroleum News

The Alaska Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Oil and Gas has approved an application from Hilcorp Alaska to construct a new gravel pad, Kalotsa, access road and adjacent pipeline in the Ninilchik unit on the Kenai Peninsula.

The division said in its Sept. 29 approval that the pad, some six miles northeast of Ninilchik on privately owned land, will be for production of natural gas from the Susan Dionne/Paxton participating area in the Ninilchik unit.

Initial separation will be at the Kalotsa pad with further treatment at the Susan Dionne pad and delivery to the Kenai Beluga Pipeline system.

Flowline installation will include two 6-inch flex-steel gas flowlines, bundled with electrical/instrumentation and fiber optic communication cables and burred three feet underground.

The Ninilchik unit consists of state and non-state lands, with the Kalotsa pad to be built on surface lands owned by the Ninilchik Native Association Inc.

The division said the schedule provides for clearing of vegetation and preparing the site beginning Oct. 2 and ending Oct. 25 and construction of the gravel access road, pad and flowline beginning Oct. 16 and ending Nov. 14.

Drilling of the first well is scheduled to begin Nov. 1 and end April 30, with well testing in May and well completion and production in June.

Four wells are proposed for the pad.

The schedule for the first well includes drilling through exploration and “expected development zones” with drilling scheduled to last for six months. Each of the following wells, which will be drilled depending on results from the first well, are expected to be drilled and put into production in less than two months.

A second well would be drilled beginning in February 2018 and a third and fourth well that same year.

The division said targets from Kalotsa are offshore.

The majority of acreage in the Ninilchik unit lies offshore, and is accessed from eight pads strung along the shore. Kalotsa will be the ninth.

The gravel pad would be 1.78 acres.

“The angle of drilling to reach the offshore target leaves a limited surface area suitable for pad location,” the state said. The pad is within section 7, township 1 south, range 13 west, Seward Meridian, southwest of the Susan Dionne pad and northeast of the Paxton pad.

Buildings at the pad will include a heater/separator unit, communications building and a 200-barrel produced water tank. Gas will be sent to the Susan Dionne pad for treatment, dehydration and compression. Kalotsa will not be a manned facility, but will be monitored by personnel staged out of the Susan Dionne pad, with drilling crews housed at an offsite drilling camp or other offsite lodging facilities.

The pad will be reached by a new 0.57 mile gravel access road connecting to an existing gravel road that connects with the Sterling Highway.