|
Kitchen Lights continues on track
Furie Operating Alaska’s Kitchen Light gas field development is progressing to plan, with the subsea gas pipeline from the field’s offshore production platform to an onshore gas processing facility now having been pressure tested, pigged and de-watered, Bruce Webb, Furie senior vice president, told Petroleum News in a Sept. 8 email. The gas line is now ready for use, Webb said.
Initial production will come from the Kitchen Lights No. 3 well, which Furie drilled using its Spartan 151 jack-up drilling rig in 2013.
Furie is in the process of installing a workover drilling rig on the offshore platform, to enable the hooking up of the well to the gas line, in readiness for gas production. Installation of the rig should be completed around Sept. 14, with the connection of the pipeline to the well taking about another 30 days, Webb said. Most of the equipment in the onshore facility, on the Kenai Peninsula near East Foreland, has now been tested and commissioned, he said.
When the field goes into production, the onshore facility will deliver utility-grade gas into the nearby Kenai Peninsula gas pipeline network.
First gas in November Although Furie does not anticipate delivering Kitchen Lights gas to customers until the beginning of January, the company expects first gas to flow from the field in November, as part of field commissioning. The company plans to store some gas in the Cook Inlet Natural Gas Storage Alaska facility near Kenai prior to January, as a reserve back-up supply, to enable gas sales to continue should it prove necessary to shut in the No. 3 well after gas sales have started, Webb said. Furie will deliver gas to the storage facility as soon as production starts, he said.
The subsea pipeline from the offshore platform, called the Julius R. platform, has a throughput capacity of 100 million cubic feet per day. Furie hopes to be able to deliver gas to customers at an initial rate of 85 million cubic feet per day. However, the actual production rate when sales begin in January will depend on what sales contracts are in place at that time. Furie has previously said that the offshore field is also capable of supporting throughput in a second 100 million-cubic-feet-per-day line, but that construction of that second line would depend on market demand for the gas.
- ALAN BAILEY
|
