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Lapp gets Kenai leases, wants partner for Delta Junction
Kay Cashman, Petroleum News publisher & managing editor
On May 27, the state of Alaska assigned Anchorage-based Lapp Resources eight shallow gas leases south and east of Anchor Point. The acreage extends toward the head of Kachemak Bay near Homer on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula.
The independent applied for the leases on Feb. 29, 2000.
Unocal farmed-in on six of the eight leases, giving it operating rights and 100 percent control of those leases, Dave Lappi told Petroleum News June 18. Lappi is founder and president of Lapp Resources. Evergreen pulls out of Delta Junction In mid-June, Evergreen Resources, a Denver-based coalbed methane producer with a major project under development in Alaska’s Matanuska Valley, withdrew from its farm-in agreement with Lapp on a 333,000-acre lease block in Delta Junction, Alaska.
“Evergreen decided to concentrate on other activities. They just acquired a Canadian company and are re-evaluating all of their positions and reshuffling the deck, so I’m looking for a new partner,” Lappi said. “I am offering very attractive terms.” Preliminary work during first two years Lapp is “not actively looking for a partner” for the Anchor Point acreage. “At this point I’m happy to do the preliminary work myself and see what comes out of it,” Lappi said.
Preliminary work will likely begin this year and include geologic mapping and sampling of coal seams, analysis of water wells in the area, maybe a little seismic.”
Depending on what he finds, Lappi hopes to drill wells in the third year.
Since it entered into a farm-in agreement on the Anchor Point leases two years ago, Unocal has unsuccessfully explored for conventional gas just north of the area that contains the Lapp shallow gas leases.
A Unocal subsidiary is a 40 percent partner in the Kenai Kachemak Pipeline, which is will start-up this year. The pipeline was originally supposed to carry gas from the Anchor Point area to the community of Kenai, but because of Unocal’s lack of exploration success in the Anchor Point area, the line will end about 35 miles north at Ninilchik where Unocal and Marathon, a 60 percent owner in KKPL, are actively exploring and announced the Ninilchik unit discovery last year.
Unocal was not available for comment about its plans for the six shallow gas leases it operates near Anchor Point, but Lappi said that although the farm-in agreement was put together two years ago, Unocal confirmed the deal in the last month prior to issuance of the leases.
“They were obviously enthusiastic enough to go forward with the farm-in,” he said. With or without a pipeline between Anchor Point and Ninilchik, Lappi expects any natural gas or coalbed methane produced from the Anchor Point leases to be used in Homer, a southern Kenai Peninsula community which, like Anchor Point to the north, is not on the area’s gas pipeline system. Three year leases Shallow gas lease terms in Alaska are for three years.
“We offer a one-time option to extend an additional three years if we see good progress in being made towards development,” Mark Myers, director of the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas, told Petroleum News June 18.
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