Kitchen Lights still on target

Furie Operating Alaska’s Kitchen Lights gas field development offshore in Cook Inlet continues to move forward. The laying of the gas pipeline from the field’s offshore platform has been completed, with the pipe-laying barge stationed in Anchorage, preparing to depart for Seattle, Bruce Webb, Furie senior vice president, told Petroleum News in a July 27 email. Webb said that the onshore facility where gas will be processed for delivery into the Kenai Peninsula has also been completed, with work associated with the facility now entering a pre-commissioning phase.

The heavy lift vessel MV Svenja has been putting the field’s production platform in place about 10 miles northwest of Boulder Point, near Nikiski on the Kenai Peninsula. Work is still in progress cementing the skirt pilings on the seafloor around the platform’s monopod caisson, Webb said. The placement of the topside decks onto the caisson, an operation now scheduled for Aug. 1 or 2, will depend on the cement hardening, a process that will take two days, he said.

Furie has previously said that it anticipates starting the testing of all of the equipment needed to operate the field, including conducting pressure testing of the gas pipeline, by the middle of August. Initial production will come from the Kitchen Lights No. 3 well that Furie drilled in 2013. However, commissioning of the field and its associated facilities is unlikely to start before November, given that Furie will need to install a workover rig on the platform for tying the production well into the subsea pipeline. Furie plans to start field production on Jan. 1, when the first of its gas supply contracts with its customers comes into play.

The gas pipeline from the Kitchen Lights platform has a maximum throughput capacity of 100 million cubic feet per day - Furie hopes for initial production of 85 million cubic feet per day. The company has indicated that the Kitchen Lights field could produce enough gas to feed two pipelines, each with a capacity of 100 million cubic feet per day. However, the company has deferred construction of a second pipeline until it can find customers to buy enough gas to justify the cost of that second line.

- ALAN BAILEY