Osprey’s revival continues.
Anchorage-based Cook Inlet Energy LLC, the operator of the offshore platform in Alaska’s Redoubt unit, has succeeded in bringing a second shut-in well back into production.
The RU-7 well is the second to be activated recently on the Osprey platform, which was in “lighthouse mode” when Cook Inlet Energy and parent company Miller Energy Resources Inc. of Tennessee acquired it out of bankruptcy in late 2009.
Using a light rig known as a hydraulic snubbing unit, Cook Inlet Energy performed a workover of RU-7 that included replacement of an electric submersible pump and wellbore optimization.
“The RU-7 well has demonstrated an initial production of 250 barrels of oil per day, which more than doubled the projected flow rate of 120 BOD,” Miller Energy said in a July 7 press release.
RU-1 production in June
In June, Cook Inlet Energy brought the RU-1 well onstream at a rate of about 350 barrels per day.
The company has big plans for Osprey, the newest and southernmost of the offshore platforms in Cook Inlet. A $17.9 million rig is under construction in Houston for the platform, and Cook Inlet Energy hopes to have it installed and drilling by year’s end.
David Hall, the company’s chief executive, has told Petroleum News the first order of business is drilling four sidetracks off existing but damaged Osprey wells. Beyond this, Hall has identified 13 potential new wells from the platform.
Production from Osprey and the Redoubt unit, the heart of which is the Redoubt Shoal field, goes to the shore-based Kustatan production facility on the west side of Cook Inlet.
“I am pleased with the successful rework of the RU-1 and RU-7 wells and the restart of the Osprey platform and Kustatan production facility,” said Scott M. Boruff, Miller Energy chief executive.
Reactivating the two wells “is only scratching the surface of the enormous potential” of the Redoubt Shoal field, Boruff said.
—Wesley Loy
