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Production begins at Lone Creek Aurora Gas also beginning gas drilling program on west side of Cook Inlet Kristen Nelson Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief
Aurora Gas has begun production from its Lone Creek No. 1 gas well on the west side of Cook Inlet, the company said Aug. 5. Gas started flowing about 1 p.m. July 31, Ed Jones, Aurora's executive vice president, engineering and operations, told Petroleum News.
Aurora owns 100 percent working interest and is operator of Lone Creek, the second gas field the company has in production on the west side of Cook Inlet.
“The well is currently flowing at a rate of about 5 million cubic feet per day,” Jones said in a statement. “We had planned to immediately take the well to 10 million cubic feet per day, but we are having to make some minor adjustments to our production facility to handle this volume.”
The company said it spent the last eight months installing six miles of six-inch gathering line from the well to a newly constructed interconnect with Marathon’s 16-inch Beluga pipeline, and installing dehydration and compression facilities at the well pad.
“So far the well is performing every bit as strong as we expected,” said Jones. “The pipeline and facilities have been essentially complete and ready to go for more than a month; however, start-up was delayed while finishing our sales meter telemetry system.”
The company’s president, Scott Pfoff, said “We are extremely pleased to finally have Lone Creek well No. 1 on production. We plan for this well to contribute to the gas needs of Southcentral Alaska for the next 10 to 15 years.”
Aurora has a contract to supply Enstar approximately 13 billion cubic feet of natural gas over the life of the field and said it believes there are enough reserves to meet that requirement and to make sales of gas to other markets as well. Well work program begins Aurora's first Cook Inlet production was at the Nicolai Creek field, also on the west side, beginning in early October 2001. State records show total production from Nicolai Creek at more than 2 billion cubic feet of gas. Jones said Aurora has produced some 900 million cubic feet of gas since it acquired the field, which had been shut in when Aurora bought the interests of Unocal and Marathon in early 2000. Wells had been drilled in the field when companies were looking for oil and some gas was used for field operations.
When Aurora began production from the field, the No. 3 well came on at 4 million cubic feet a day, Jones said, and averaged 3.8 to 3.9 million cubic feet a day for the first full month of production in November 2001.
"We do have a rig on that particular well right now trying to shut off the water and restore some of the production volumes at the No. 3 well," Jones said. Production from the well has been declining: state records show it averaged 1.4 million cubic feet a day in July 2002, and just over half a million cubic feet a day in June 2003, the most recent month for which records are available.
Aurora mobilized the Aurora Well Service rig No. 1 from Nikiski to the west side of the inlet and is still rigging up at the Nicolai No. 3, Jones said Aug. 5. Aurora expects about a week's work on that well, after which the well will be put back on production. Aurora's first Alaska grassroots well The rig will then move to Nicolai No. 9 at the southern end of the field, a new well, and the first grassroots well Aurora has drilled in Alaska, Jones said. Work on the No. 9 is expected to start between Aug. 10 and Aug. 15, Jones said, and is expected to take about three weeks.
Once the Nicolai No. 9 is drilled, the rig will be moved to re-enter an old Moquawkie well or possibly drill another new well, the Lone Creek No. 2. Jones said there are a couple of abandoned Moquawkie wells which Aurora is looking at re-entering.
There is a pretty good system of gravel roads in the area, Jones said, and the rig will be moved some 20 miles by road to either one of the Moquawkie wells or the Lone Creek No. 3 location sometime in September.
"The target is to be completed by the end of October," Jones said, because "the rig is not really equipped to operate in winter." Once drilling is complete, the rig will be moved back across the inlet for the winter.
Aurora conducted a 28 square mile 3-D seismic program last winter and is using the data to prioritize its projects. Andrew Clifford, Aurora’s executive vice president of exploration said, “the data is high quality and we are getting a much better idea of the subsurface opportunities under our leases.”
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