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Glacier restarts West McArthur production
CIE gets approval from Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas to extend West McArthur River, Redoubt PODs to April 30, 2022 Kay Cashman Petroleum News
Cook Inlet Energy, or CIE, a wholly owned subsidiary of Glacier Oil and Gas, restarted its West McArthur River production on Oct. 25, after previously restarting Redoubt, its other West Cook Inlet unit. Both offshore oil fields had been shut down since May 2020.
Production at West McArthur River was reinstated from two wells, WMRU-05 and WMRU-06.
Collectively the two WMRU wells are “contributing an additional 500 barrels of oil per day and remain strong. We remain encouraged about the asset in addition to finishing out 2021 in a healthy position,” Glacier President Stephen Ratcliff told Petroleum News in an email Nov. 9.
Glacier put the Redoubt unit back online Sept. 28, with output at 1,200 barrels a day, Ratcliff told PN Oct. 7.
At that time, he said the West McArthur River unit would be back online sometime in November. WMRU was expected to give Glacier’s Cook Inlet oil output a “300-500 bpd uptick.”
CIE told Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas on Sept. 29 that as part of its restart plan it brought its personnel onsite to its “West Side operations at the end of July,” referring to its Osprey Platform in the Redoubt unit, onshore Kustatan Production Facility and the West McArthur River unit.
“The wells, facility, pipelines, and associated infrastructure were thoroughly checked in accordance with state and federal regulations and were systematically brought online,” CIE said.
POD extensions approved On Oct. 26 requests from CIE to extend Redoubt’s 20th plan of development and WMRU’s 29th POD until April 30, 2022, were approved by the division.
CIE filed the requests on Sept. 30. They were the second POD extensions for both the units.
Redoubt and WMRU’s plans of development were originally set to expire on April 30, 2021. However, due to complications arising from Covid-19, the division approved CIE’s application for suspensions of operations and production, or SOPs, for both units on June. 4.
On March 16 of this year, CIE requested extensions of both unit’s SOPs and PODs for one year, citing the global condition of low crude oil prices combined with the lack of demand as justification. The division approved these extensions on April 23. However, in its decision, the agency modified the term of the initial extensions to six months, expiring on Oct. 31.
Furthermore, the division imposed additional modifications to the extensions, requiring CIE to provide updates on the status of Redoubt and WMRU by July 31.
On July 8, the agency received notification from CIE of its intent to restart the Redoubt unit, followed by the WMRU.
In its request to extend the PODs to April 30, 2022, CIE said it needed the additional time to transition to normal operations and develop plans that would depend upon performance of existing wells within the units that had been shut-in for more than a year and a half.
The company also said the extension would re-align the Redoubt unit and the WMRU with their normal POD cycles.
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