THE EXPLORERS 2005: Rutter and Wilbanks expands holdings

Texas-based independent to continue Copper River basin exploration, takes Cook Inlet lease positions

Steve Sutherlin

Petroleum News

Midland, Texas-based independent oil and gas company Rutter and Wilbanks Corp. said disappointing test results earlier this year for the lower zone of its gas exploration well near Glennallen in Alaska’s undeveloped Copper River basin are not the last word for the company in Alaska, the company’s Copper River basin program, or even the well itself.

“We never got enough gas to light a cigarette,” Bill Rutter Jr. told Petroleum News in August.

Rutter said the company tested the lower zone of the company’s 7,500 foot Ahtna No. 119 well even though well logs said the well contained water, because wells with similar log readings in Cook Inlet have gone on to produce gas. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case at the Copper River basin well.

“The logs said it was water, and the logs were right,” he said.

The company is continuing tests on the well to evaluate reservoirs that may have been the source of gas traces the company detected along the way as it drilled the well.

So far testing has been inconclusive, Bill Rutter III told Petroleum News in October.

Rutter said the well had been perforated twice and acidized once, but still the company had failed to communicate with the reservoir.

Because of extremely high pressures encountered in the well, heavy drilling mud was used to drill and set casing, Rutter said, adding that the company now theorizes that the mud has invaded the reservoir two feet or more from the well bore. The company will bring specialized equipment to the site to penetrate six feet to eight feet into the sand layer for additional testing.

Rutter said regardless of well testing results, the company plans further exploration in the Copper River basin.

“Wildcatters have failures — that’s the nature of the game,” he said, adding that the 80-year old company will persevere in Alaska.

The company is considering doing seismic exploration of the area this winter.

Rutter and Wilbanks hopes to find 100 billion cubic feet or more of natural gas to justify building a pipeline from Glennallen to Palmer, to get the company’s gas into the Enstar system for Southcentral Alaska consumers to help replace dwindling Cook Inlet basin production.

If the field produces considerably smaller quantities of gas, the company is eyeing the local market, supplying Glennallen and the Copper Valley Electric Association, a Glennallen-based rural electric cooperative with 3,600 customers in the Copper River basin and Valdez.

Eleven wells have been drilled in the Copper River basin, but there have been none since Copper Valley Machine Works drilled Alicia No. 1 in 1983.

Forest Oil and Anschutz Exploration are partners in the prospect.

Cook Inlet

The company took a block of onshore leases on the eastern side of the southern Kenai Peninsula, adjacent to the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. In Cook Inlet the company took tracts to the east and west of Forest acreage south of Redoubt Shoals, and also picked up leases east of ConocoPhillips Alaska’s North Cook Inlet gas field.

Rutter said the company was starting prospect enhancement work in Cook Inlet in October using magnetic and property data. It also had offers out to purchase additional Cook Inlet acreage, he said.

“We’re geared up for Alaska so we want to become a much bigger player,’” he said.