Mustang Holding, a Finnex Operating company, has applied to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to expand the pad at the Mustang field in the Southern Miluveach unit. The corps is accepting comments through Aug. 8.
Since Finnex acquired Mustang from the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority last fall, the company has been working to bring the field back into production. Mustang, which produces from the Kuparuk C sands, was in production for just a month in 2019 under developer Brooks Range Petroleum. Southern Miluveach lies between the Kuparuk River unit -- to the east and south -- and the Quokka unit to the west.
The application is for a 5-acre expansion of the Mustang pad to provide space for employee housing.
The corps said the expansion would be on the southeast corner of the Mustang pad at the road approach. An accompanying illustration shows the expansion as adjacent to the road on the south and to the southeastern edge of the existing pad.
Gravel for the project would be from the original mine site adjacent to the pad, the corps said.
Mustang has already received a land use permit and a plan of operations authorization from the Alaska Department of Natural Resources and an Alaska Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.
Beginning in September
The proposed expansion would require discharging 56,000 cubic yards of gravel, the corps said, with work beginning in September and taking some two months to complete.
Brooks Range received a Section 404 permit authorization in 2013, authorizing some 99.2 acres of fill onto wetlands for the original road, pad and gravel mine at Mustang.
In its operational restart approval, received from DNR's Division of Oil and Gas in June, Mustang Holding received approval of its plan for a phased approach, with phase 1 to include installation of an early production facility or EPF; re-installation of various tanks, equipment and production modules; re-entry of up to four existing wells; and reconnection of the Mustang Pipeline to Alpine Transportation's common carrier pipeline located 1,150 feet south of the pad.
Subsequent phases will include drilling of additional wells, expanding waterflood and adding a produced water inj4ection pump system to the EPF.
The company said in May that re-start at Mustang could be as early as third quarter or the beginning of the fourth quarter. The company has Doyon Rig 141 under contract.
--KRISTEN NELSON
