Commission OKs Beaver Creek pool

The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has approved a request from Hilcorp Alaska to define a third gas pool, the Tyonek, at the Beaver Creek field on the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

In a May 6 order the commission said that information gathered since pool rules were last modified for Beaver Creek “demonstrates that existing statewide well spacing requirements do not promote efficient development of the proposed Tyonek Gas Pool within the Beaver Creek Unit.”

Under the revised rules there are no restrictions on well spacing in the Sterling, Beluga and Tyonek gas pools except the requirement that there be 1,500 feet between the pay zones in a well and the exterior boundary of the unit “where owners and landowners are not the same on both sides of the line.”

In testimony at a March 29 hearing Hilcorp told the commission the proposed Tyonek gas pool is gas found between the Sterling and Beluga gas pools and the Tyonek oil pool, describing the Beaver Creek Tyonek gas pool as similar to Tyonek elsewhere with abundant coal markers.

Tyonek gas at Beaver Creek was relatively overlooked until a recent well found commercial gas, although there were three Tyonek gas tests beginning with a 1996 well. That well stopped producing prior to Hilcorp taking over the field from Marathon in 2012 and while Hilcorp found gas in a well tested in 2014 that well quickly became unproductive.

A well perforated in 2015 produced 11 million cubic feet a day of natural gas in the Tyonek.

Hilcorp has drilled wells and sidetracks at Beaver Creek and the commission approved a vertical expansion of the Beluga gas pool in 2014 to include all potentially gas-bearing sands in the pool.

In a separate request, Hilcorp asked the commission May 5 to authorize downhole commingling of production from the Tyonek and Beluga gas pools in the Beaver Creek Unit No. 23 well.

- KRISTEN NELSON