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Apache quiet on results of drilling
Apache Corp. has nothing to report yet on the results of its drilling of its first well in Alaska’s Cook Inlet basin, the Kaldachabuna No. 2 well onshore on the west side of the inlet, Lisa Parker, Apache Alaska’s manager, government relations, told Petroleum News in a July 9 email.
The company spud the well in mid-November and subsequently found the drilling to be very challenging, the well having penetrated more than 100 coal seams, with 24 of those seams being more than 10 feet thick, John Hendrix, Apache’s general manager in Alaska, said in February. The Kaldachabuna prospect is known from a well drilled in 1980 to have an oil pool in relatively low-permeability rock. Apache had hoped to use well stimulation techniques to test the possibility of producing oil from the prospect. The company also planned to use the results of the drilling to evaluate other prospects identified from an extensive program of 3-D seismic surveying that the company is carrying out in the Cook Inlet basin.
Well suspended According to data that Apache has filed with the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission the company completed the Kaldachabuna No. 2 well on April 11, at which point the well was suspended rather than being plugged and abandoned. The well reached a true vertical depth of 11,389 feet.
Parker said that Apache is in the process of resolving some outstanding issues relating to its seismic program before resuming that program. In February the National Marine Fisheries Service issued an incidental harassment authorization allowing Apache to continue its offshore seismic surveying in 2013 without infringing the Marine Mammals Protection Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has yet to complete a final environmental assessment for Apache’s planned seismic work onshore in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.
—Alan Bailey
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