|
Bush administration looks at gas drilling in Hanford Reach Monument Search is on for natural gas on both sides of the Cascades after
a 15-year hiatus following 1986 gas-price crash by The Associated Press
The Bush administration is considering drilling for natural gas under the new Hanford Reach National Monument in Eastern Washington, The Seattle Times reported April 29.
With fuel prices high, wildcat drillers are searching for gas even in long-shot places. The administration has called for more exploration for oil and gas resources in new areas — even protected places such as Hanford Reach and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
Interior Secretary Gale Norton said this past week that exploration beneath new monuments was under consideration, The Times said.
Already, large leases have been sold near the newly declared 51-mile Hanford Reach monument on the Columbia River, The Times reported.
A U.S. Geological Survey study released by a House committee in March listed Hanford Reach among five national monument areas with natural-gas potential.
The report said that “the probability for the presence of undiscovered gas resources (at Hanford) is moderate, but the potential volume of gas resource is large.”
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., has promised a fight if the White House persists in trying to drill at Hanford Reach.
“Sen. Murray would do everything within her power and then some to prevent drilling within our national monuments,” said Murray spokesman Todd Webster. Gas search on both sides of Cascades On both sides of the Cascades, more wildcat drillers are showing up to look for natural gas now that prices have risen. While the scale of exploration in Washington is minuscule compared to Alaska, it has grown substantially.
For 15 years, exploratory wells were dug in Washington about three times a year on average, said Bill Lingley, a petroleum geologist with the state Department of Natural Resources.
But in the past 12 months, wildcat drillers bored 19 new holes and received permits for 10 more, The Times reported April 29.
“Washington is one of the last major frontier areas for gas,” said George Brown, a geologist with the Bureau of Land Management in Spokane.
“Its potential for a major play is world-class,” Brown said. “But somebody’s actually got to find it first, and it’s very difficult to find.”
In January, the state sold more than 110,000 acres of new oil and gas leases, a 10-fold increase from its last sale three years earlier. The number of federal land leaseholders in the state has more than doubled since 1999.
“The industry has not been exploring for the past 15 years,” said Logan MacMillan, lands and environment manager with the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States.
“When prices cratered in 1986, we just stopped,” MacMillan said. “Now, futures prices look good, and we’re feeling like this is the time to go ahead again.” Gas sign in Eastern Washington Eastern Washington has all the right signs for a major gas find. There are source rocks, fossil plant fragments that give off methane as they rot and are altered by heat. There are porous sandstones, which trap gas between grains of sand.
The basalt layer is so thick — 16,000 feet in places — it compresses gas in ever larger volumes.
But no one knows precisely where the gas is located because it’s difficult to see beneath the dense igneous rock using seismology or imaging.
And basalt is expensive to cut through. The cost of drilling can top $15 million.
There have been a few successes. Subsurface gas found in the Rattlesnake Hills of Benton County was drawn out for fuel until it petered out in the 1940s.
In the 1980s, Shell Oil drilled a well south of George that produced 5 million cubic feet of gas per day during a test but was quickly depleted.
One lucky strike, Lingley predicted, could lead to 40 wells, producing 6 million cubic feet per day for 20 years — and yielding a profit at current prices of up to $15 million or so a year.
In Western Washington, geologists have known there was gas in old coal deposits since at least the 1920s, when a man digging for water broke for lunch, lit his pipe — and set his whiskers and beard on fire. Western finds would be small Any find in Western Washington is expected to be relatively small, The Times reported.
Yet the proximity of three major pipelines — connecting Washington to major gas fields in Canada, Wyoming and elsewhere — boosts the value of locally generated supply.
“Right now, anybody who can find gas inside the pipeline loop is in a really good position,” said Lingley.
Denver-based Duncan Oil is exploring at Ryderwood, in Cowlitz County, far from coal-mine deposits. A small crew of drillers is working at a 120-foot natural-gas derrick, with plans to bore 6,000 feet below the surface over a two-week period.
“A lot of it is gut feel,” said John Cestia, vice president of exploration for Duncan. “You do a lot of science and then you make a hard decision. That’s why it’s a high-risk business.”
The search for oil here is largely on hold. Along the coast, 116 oil wells were drilled between 1904 and 1963, producing nothing worthy of production.
| 