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This month in history: Seismic, possible well planned at Cosmo 20 years ago: Cosmopolitan unit operator ConocoPhillips to begin shooting 3D seismic within year, following successful drilling
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
Editor's note: This story first appeared in the Nov. 21, 2004, issue of Petroleum News.
ConocoPhillips Alaska has told state and federal officials it will begin shooting 3D seismic at the Cosmopolitan unit off the lower Kenai Peninsula in Southcentral Alaska's Cook Inlet within a year, following up on successful drilling.
ConocoPhillips predecessor Phillips Alaska began drilling the Hansen No. 1 at Cosmopolitan in the fall of 2001 and the state-federal unit was approved Nov. 14, 2001.
An initial three-year plan called for either 3D seismic or a sidetrack to the Hansen well. ConocoPhillips sidetracked the Hansen in 2003, and production tested the Hansen 1A, which state records show as a single-completion oil well.
Pennzoil drilled the discovery well at Cosmopolitan, the Starichkof State No. 1, in 1967 from a jack-up rig, recovering oil at 6,800 feet and 6,900 feet in a 12,112-foot vertical hole. The state found that well capable of production. A second well, the Starichkof State Unit No. 1, drilled some 2 miles from the discovery well, found water in the Hemlock formation at 7,355 feet and a slight amount of gas around 4,000 feet; the discovery was never developed.
The current unit was approved in 2001 with a three-year plan. The new, two-year plan for the unit, approved by regulators in early November 2004, requires that a minimum of 40 square miles of 3D seismic be acquired beginning no later than Nov. 14, 2005, with acquisition to be complete by Nov. 14, 2006, or the drilling of another well.
The well alternative requires ConocoPhillips to commit to drill by Nov. 14, 2005, and drill by the end of the plan period in November 2006.
The new well would be required "to penetrate the Lower Tyonek sand-prone interval" found in the Starichkof State No. 1 well, or a true vertical depth of 6,500 feet subsea, by Nov. 14, 2006. The well could be a sidetrack or a new well, but the bottomhole would need to be more than 500 feet from the bottomhole location of the Hansen 1 and Hansen 1A wells.
Devon picks up more, and more? ConocoPhillips Alaska has a 70% working interest in Cosmopolitan and is the unit operator. Forest Oil had a 25% working interest and Devon Energy held the remaining 5%, but earlier this year Oklahoma-based Devon picked up half of Forest's interest, so Devon now holds a 17.5% working interest ownership and Forest holds 12.5%.
ConocoPhillips has been looking for another partner at Cosmopolitan, shopping a portion of its working interest in exchange for funding of seismic or a delineation well at the North American Prospects Expo in Houston in February. A source at ConocoPhillips told Petroleum News in mid-November that Devon was farming in on the remaining available working interest "in order to get another well drilled" at Cosmopolitan.
That information had not been officially confirmed by either ConocoPhillips or Devon at the time this edition of Petroleum News went to press on Nov. 17.
Devon Canada, a Calgary-based subsidiary of Devon Energy, oversees Devon's Alaska North Slope assets.
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