Buccaneer tests Cosmo, spuds Kenai Loop

The Cosmo No. 1 well has flow tested at a “maximum rate” of 7.2 million cubic feet of gas per day from the Tyonek formation, according to operator Buccaneer Energy Ltd.

The flow test targeted a 73-foot section of Tyonek sands at approximately 5,500 feet measured depth. The company now plans to test a second gas zone at 4,300 feet.

Buccaneer previously claimed to have encountered 488 feet of indicated oil and gas pay at Cosmo No. 1 including 18 gas zones and eight oil zones. The company previously recovered samples from two oil zones between 5,824 and 6,092 feet, but postponed a “more extensive flow test” because of the “very limited oil storage capacity” on its rig.

The oil zones were shallower than those encountered in previous Cosmopolitan drilling.

The Cosmopolitan prospect is located off the coast of Anchor Point.

While the Cosmopolitan prospect has long been known to contain a “substantial amount of gas,” as the Division of Oil and Gas’ Alan Dennis put it in 2010, the region is primarily considered oil prone, and previous developments have targeted the oil potential.

But with the extension of regional transportation into the southern Kenai Peninsula in recent years, natural gas may provide the best way to generate revenue from the prospect in the short term. In the only previous attempt to develop the field, Pioneer Natural Resources Inc. trucked crude oil some 75 miles north to the Tesoro refinery in Kenai.

Buccaneer operates the prospect and holds a 25 percent working interest in the leases, with the privately held BlueCrest Energy Inc. holding the remaining 75 percent.

Buccaneer has also recently spud a fourth well at its onshore Kenai Loop field.

The company began drilling at the gas field near the city of Kenai on Aug. 7, and plans to drill the well to a vertical depth of 10,700 feet and a measured depth of 10,897 feet.

The well is targeting what “appears to be fault separated from the current producing zones in the Kenai Loop No. 1-1 and Kenai Loop No. 1-3 wells,” the company said.

Buccaneer expects to complete drill in late September.

—Eric Lidji