|
Cook Inlet Energy spuds exploratory well Sword No. 1 will target promising fault block adjacent to West McArthur River; company also spuds well on Olson Creek gas prospect Wesley Loy For Petroleum News
Cook Inlet Energy LLC has started drilling operations on its Sword No. 1 exploratory well, located near the company’s producing West McArthur River oil field.
The well was spudded on June 19, and drilling as of June 26 had reached about 3,000 feet measured depth, the company said in a press release.
Sword No. 1 ultimately will go 19,000 feet into an adjacent fault block to the West McArthur River field, the company said.
Cook Inlet Energy said 3-D seismic data suggest an estimated ultimate recovery of 800,000 barrels of oil from the well.
“Management expects to report initial drill results in about two months,” the company said.
The company also announced it had spudded an exploratory well on its Olson Creek natural gas prospect.
Target is offshore Anchorage-based Cook Inlet Energy is the Alaska subsidiary of Miller Energy Resources Inc. of Tennessee. Miller is a small company, but its shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
David Hall, Cook Inlet Energy’s chief executive, told Petroleum News that West McArthur River is actually an offshore field, with wells drilled from an onshore pad.
The Sword No. 1 drill site is adjacent to the West McArthur River pad. Sword is a directional extended-reach well that, like the other West Mac wells, will have a bottom hole location underneath the inlet, Hall said.
The company has hired Patterson-UTI Drilling Co.’s rig 191 to drill the Sword well.
In the mid-1960s, Pan American drilled the West Foreland Unit No. 1 well from a barge into the same fault block the Sword No. 1 will target, Cook Inlet Energy said. Mud logs revealed oil throughout the 500-foot-thick Hemlock formation, the primary target for Sword.
Production from Sword could be processed through the existing West McArthur River facility “with minimal hook-up time,” the company said.
Olson Creek gas well spudded On June 25, Cook Inlet Energy spudded an exploratory well on its Olson Creek natural gas prospect on the inlet’s west side. The company is drilling with its own rig 34.
Plans involve drilling to a final measured depth of 7,500 feet, the company said in a press release.
“The well will be logged, perforated and flow tested over the next 40 to 60 days,” the company said.
The Olson Creek prospect is west of the ConocoPhillips-operated Beluga River gas field.
| 