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Contraction planned for Redoubt unit
Mandatory unit contraction would eliminate all acreage except existing Hemlock participating area and proposed South Stepout PA Eric Lidji for Petroleum News
In a reflection that the revival of the Redoubt unit has arrived at a new phase, Glacier Oil & Gas Corp. has asked the state to contract the unit and to form a new participating area.
Through its subsidiary Cook Inlet Energy LLC, the company made the application in November 2017 to comply with a state regulation requiring companies to contract a unit to participating areas and any facilitating acreage after 10 years of sustained production.
The contraction would reduce the size of the five-lease Redoubt unit to some 3,117 acres, down from approximately 23,526 acres now, by removing ADL 381201 in its entirety and removing large portions of ADL 378114, ADL 374002, ADL 381203, ADL 381003.
The remaining unit would cover the existing Hemlock participating area in the northern half of the unit and the proposed South Stepout participating area in the southern half.
Change in ownership Forcenergy Inc. formed the Redoubt unit in 1997 and reached sustained production in 2002. Through its predecessor Miller Energy Resources Ltd., Glacier acquired the Redoubt unit in late 2009 and undertook a redevelopment effort between 2010 and 2013.
The Alaska Department of Natural Resources agreed to defer the mandatory contraction while Cook Inlet Energy redeveloped the unit. With production currently above its 2009 levels, Glacier now believes deferrals are no longer needed and applied for contraction.
The efforts to date focused mostly on the existing Hemlock participating area through sidetracks and workovers of existing wells and waterflood injections to enhance recovery.
But the company also targeted a previously undeveloped accumulation with the Redoubt Unit No. 9 well. Although an electric submersible pump failed at the well soon after installation, the company said it was “encouraged by early production” and planned to fix the pump and restart production. The well forms the basis of the application for the South Stepout participating area, which would cover some 1,280 acres at two leases.
As of June 2018, the state had yet to rule on either the proposed unit contraction or the proposed participating area but had approved a new plan of development for the unit.
Small projects this year In that 18th plan of development for the coming year, Glacier announced a long-term goal of delineating and developing the Central, Southern and Northern fault blocks at the unit, but said that its immediate plans mostly involve sidetracks and workovers.
The company undertook a similar range of projects in its 17th development year, running through the end of April 2018. The company drilled the Redoubt Unit No. 3A sidetrack as a waterflood injection well. The company also replaced electric submersible pumps in the Redoubt Unit No. 1A and Redoubt Unit No. 5B wells, although a related project to hydraulically fracture those two sidetracks was cancelled following pump failures.
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