Furie Operating Alaska is relocating its Kitchen Lights gas production platform south to Seattle for the winter, rather than trying to overwinter the platform in the Cook Inlet region, Bruce Webb, company vice president, told Petroleum News on Wednesday.
"It turned out that was the least expensive option and the option with the least risk," Webb said.
Furie had planned to install the platform in its Cook Inlet Kitchen Lights unit during this past summer in hopes of bringing an offshore gas field that the company has discovered on line by the end of the year. But, following a delay during the shipment of the platform to Alaska from Texas, where it was manufactured, the platform did not arrive in the Inlet until September. By that time it was too late to begin platform installation before the winter sea-ice season, so Furie decided to defer the installation until after the spring sea-ice breakup in 2015.
Several options for winter
The company considered various options for what to do with the platform during the winter, including the possibility of stashing the massive equipment at Port MacKenzie, across Knik Arm from Anchorage.
But Furie wants to start platform installation in May, at a time when the platform, if staged at Port MacKenzie, might still be hemmed in by sea ice, Webb said. And, with no docks large enough for mooring the barge, keeping the equipment in Alaska would require the constant use of a tugboat in somewhere like Kachemak Bay or Resurrection Bay, or perhaps in Prince William Sound, he said.
Moreover, with the equipment configured for installation and hook-up prior to the winter, everything would have had to be weatherized prior to staging the equipment in southern Alaska, Webb said. Taking into account all of these various factors, moving the barge with the equipment back to Seattle proved the best solution, he said.
Drilling continues in the spring
Meanwhile, Furie's Spartan 151 jack-up drilling rig has competed the drilling of the Kitchen Lights unit No. 5 well and the rig is now stacked in Port Graham for the winter, Webb said. The rig will return to Upper Cook Inlet in the spring to drill the Kitchen Lights No. 6 well.
Furie and its predecessor company, Escopeta Oil Co., have been engaged in a program of drilling in the offshore Kitchen Lights unit since fall 2011. The Kitchen Lights unit No. 1 well was located in the Corsair block, one of the four exploration blocks that constitute the unit. The company subsequently drilled the Kitchen Lights No. 2 well, also in the Corsair block, and the Kitchen Lights No. 3 in the central block, to the south of the Corsair block.
Furie announced the discovery of a significant gas field, although the size of that field remains unclear, based on publicly available information. The company has proceeded with field development, centered on the No. 3 well, the planned location of the platform that the company is now having to stage in Seattle for the winter. The company has stashed piping at Port MacKenzie for the subsea gas pipeline that will deliver gas from the platform to surface facilities, already under construction near East Foreland on the Kenai Peninsula.
Furie has also continued its exploration program, drilling the Kitchen Lights unit No. 4 well in the northern block of the unit in 2013 and 2014, and now completing the Kitchen Lights No. 5 well in the central block. Webb said that the Kitchen Lights unit No. 6 well, planned for next spring, will be located in the southwest block of the unit.
This story originally appeared in Petroleum News and has been republished with permission.