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THE EXPLORERS 2004: Pelican set to drill four Cook Inlet wells Company opened Anchorage office in mid-2004; staying onshore on west side in hunt for gas Kay Cashman Petroleum News
With one disappointment under its belt — a dry hole at Iliamna No. 1 — Pelican Hill Oil and Gas is moving forward to drill as many as four onshore west Cook Inlet gas exploration wells between November 2004 and spring 2005. The San Clemente, Calif., independent, which bought its first leases in Alaska in 2001, also opened an Anchorage office in mid-2004.
“We’ve got a sign on Iliamna No. 1, ‘Opened by mistake,’ Arlen Ehm, vice president/Alaska for Pelican Hill’s Alaska operation, told Petroleum News on Nov. 1, 2004. Iliamna No. 1 was a vertical hole in section 31, township 9 north, range 14 west, Seward Meridian. It was on state oil and gas lease ADL 0388133, onshore at Trading Bay, northwest of the Trading Bay production facility.
“We’re in the process of clearing everything out at that drill site at the moment; most of its already gone,” he said. “What we’re doing is mobilizing enough supplies to run all winter for four wells.”
Pelican Hill will be spudding N Beluga No. 1 in the first section north of the ConocoPhillips-operated Beluga River gas field in mid-November 2004.
“We’re driving conductor pipe now,” Ehm said.
N Beluga No. 1 is “2,000 feet from the east line and 1,750 from the south line of section 12, township 13 north, range 10 west,” he said. “It’s a close twin to the Alaska Energy Development well — the Burglin X33-12 — which is about 250 feet away.”
“That well,” he said, “was pronounced dry and plugged and abandoned without testing in 1977.” Pelican Hill’s well is on a Trading Bay Oil and Gas lease.
“We’re farming in the acreage by drilling the well,” Ehm said. “Once it has been spudded the lease will be assigned to Pelican Hill.”
Next drilling at Pretty Creek Under Pelican Hill’s agreement with Trading Bay Oil and Gas, if the N Beluga No. 1 is spud by Dec. 1, 2004, Pelican Hill has “a right to farm in all of the Trading Bay Oil and Gas Pretty Creek leases,” Ehm said. “I am preparing to permit two wells at Pretty Creek.”
The Pretty Creek leases are between Unocal’s Pretty Creek and Lewis River units –— all the acreage between those two units.
“We’d like to drill two wells there — N Pretty Creek 1 and N Pretty Creek 2 — and then go back and drill a second well at Beluga, the NE Beluga 1, which I’m presently permitting. But drilling NE Beluga 1 is conditional upon N Beluga 1 being successful, just as drilling a second Pretty Creek well is conditional upon the success of the first Pretty Creek well,” Ehm said.
The last three wells, he said, are in the Susitna Flats state game refuge.
Jim Rose operations superintendent Pelican Hill plans to use its own drilling rig, a Water Resources International rig, the Ideco H-35 KD, to drill the wells. Used to drill water wells in Hawaii and brought to Alaska by Pelican Hill President Al Gross, the rig was completely refurbished in 2004.
Ehm said that Jim Rose is the company’s operations superintendent.
Camp operations are being run by Kuukpik Arctic Catering. Other contractors include Tesco, Quadco, Baroid, BJ Services and MRO Sales, he said.
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