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Cook Inlet Energy doubles crude production with sidetrack startup
Cook Inlet Energy LLC has more than doubled its oil production with the startup of a reworked well on its offshore Osprey platform.
The platform, the southernmost in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, sits in the Redoubt unit.
The company announced it had brought a sidetrack of the RU-2 well onstream on June 20 with an initial production rate of 1,281 barrels of oil per day and a water cut of 19 percent.
Cook Inlet Energy previously had been producing about 850 barrels per day total from two fields, Redoubt and West McArthur River, company chief executive David Hall told Petroleum News.
The Anchorage-based company is the Alaska subsidiary of publicly traded Miller Energy Resources Inc. of Tennessee. The bulk of Miller’s production is in Alaska.
The successful sidetrack is “a tremendous milestone for Miller,” said Scott Boruff, Miller’s chief executive.
Known as RU-2A, the sidetrack repaired a damaged well originally drilled in 2002.
“The original RU-2 well, drilled by a previous operator, produced approximately 500,000 barrels before it suffered casing damage caused by a poor completion design,” Miller said in a June 24 press release. “After assessing the deficiencies that resulted in the sub-optimal production and eventual catastrophic well failure, Miller re-engineered the drilling and completion to achieve optimal oil recovery on re-entry. RU-2A was sidetracked from the original RU-2 well starting at a depth of approximately 8,500 feet and drilled to a measured depth of 15,265 feet. The completed well has a new bottom hole located 46 feet higher on structure than the original RU-2 well.”
Aggressive plans for platform A third-party reserve report shows about 950,000 barrels of remaining recoverable oil reserves from the RU-2A well, Miller said.
Cook Inlet Energy, with Miller’s backing, launched as an Alaska producer in late 2009, after acquiring a package of west inlet assets through a bankruptcy sale.
Since then, Cook Inlet Energy has been working diligently to revive shut-in Redoubt unit wells. The company currently has two oil wells producing, RU-2A and RU-7, and two natural gas wells, RU-3 and RU-4, Hall said.
The company has aggressive workover and drilling plans.
“RU-2A is one of five planned sidetracks and over 13 new wells on the company’s Osprey platform,” the Miller press release said.
—Wesley Loy
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