Furie is preparing for drilling

Furie Operating Alaska’s jack-up drilling rig, the Randolf Yost, is still in Kachemak Bay, being fitted out for this summer’s drilling season. The rig should move out around May 5 for stationing at Furie’s Julius R. offshore gas production platform on May 6, Bruce Webb, Furie senior vice president, told Petroleum News in an April 25 email.

The idea is that the rig will be stationed on the seafloor and cantilevered over the platform for drilling wells.

By the time water, fuel, material and supplies have been loaded, it will likely be around May 20 when the drilling crew starts to drive casing, with actual drilling starting around May 25, Webb said.

Currently a single well at the Julius B. platform is producing natural gas from Furie’s offshore Kitchen Lights gas field. The gas is being delivered via a subsea pipeline, an onshore processing facility and the Kenai Peninsula gas pipeline infrastructure for power generation by Homer Electric Association on the peninsula.

Under the current Kitchen Lights plan of operations, Furie has said that it will complete two new development wells this year, and two more wells between April 2017 and October 2018. A new gas supply agreement with Enstar Natural Gas Co., scheduled to go into operation in 2018, requires that Furie drill and prove out two new Kitchen Lights wells in 2016. Furie also plans some new exploration drilling in the Kitchen Lights unit using the Randolf Yost rig.

- ALAN BAILEY