Furie drilling at Kitchen Lights

Furie Operating Alaska has started drilling the Kitchen Light Unit No. A-2 well offshore in the Cook Inlet, Bruce Webb, Furie senior vice president, told Petroleum News in a June 21 email. The well spudded on June 19, Webb said.

Furie is drilling the well using the Randolf Yost jack-up rig, cantilevered over the Julius R. offshore gas production platform. The well is the first of four development wells that the company plans to drill in its Kitchen Lights gas field. The company has committed to drilling two of those well this year and two further wells between April 2017 and October 2018. Although the Julius R. Platform has a workover rig for well maintenance, a powerful jack-up rig is required for the drilling of new wells.

Furie now has agreements for the supply of Kitchen Lights gas to Homer Electric Association and Enstar Natural Gas Co. While the HEA agreement has already gone into effect, the Enstar agreement starts in April 2018. Under the terms of the Enstar agreement, Furie must drill and prove out two new Kitchen Lights wells in 2016, to assure the reliability of the future Kitchen Lights gas supply.

Currently a single well, the Kitchen Lights No. 3 well, produces gas from Furie’s offshore gas field. The gas is being delivered through a subsea pipeline to an onshore facility, from where it is output to the Kenai Peninsula gas transmission pipeline network for delivery to HEA.

In addition to the Kitchen Lights development drilling, Furie plans some new exploration drilling in the Kitchen Lights unit using the Randolf Yost rig.

- ALAN BAILEY