Photo courtesy Furie Operating Alaska The first production platform to be installed in Cook Inlet since the mid-1980s arrived in Kachemak Bay last September. The Furie Operating Alaska platform was completed in Ingleside, Texas, last summer, and began its journey from Corpus Christi to Alaska through the Gulf of Mexico and the Panama Canal on June 4, 2014.

Photo courtesy Furie Operating Alaska The first production platform to be installed in Cook Inlet since the mid-1980s arrived in Kachemak Bay last September. The Furie Operating Alaska platform was completed in Ingleside, Texas, last summer, and began its journey from Corpus Christi to Alaska through the Gulf of Mexico and the Panama Canal on June 4, 2014.

Furie nears first production from Kitchen Lights field

  • By Tim Bradner
  • Wednesday, July 8, 2015 11:17pm
  • News

Furie Operating Alaska will begin producing natural gas in November from a newly installed production platform at its Kitchen Lights gas discovery in Cook Inlet, the company said.

It has been a long haul for the company, which entered Alaska as Escopeta Oil and Gas several years ago.

The initial producing rate will be 15 million to 20 million cubic feet per day but that will increase as more customers are lined up, said Bruce Webb, a Furie vice president. The identity of the current customer cannot be disclosed, Webb said.

A 10-inch platform-to-shore pipeline now installed and almost complete will have a maximum capacity of shipping 100 million cubic feet per day and Furie’s plans call for second 10-inch pipeline, with equal capacity, when sales contracts allow for expansion.

The platform and other production facilities are designed to handle 200 million cubic feet per day, Webb said.

“The pipeline is just about complete with a tie-in of the offshore pipeline with the onshore pipeline. Onshore facilities are also almost finished,” he said.

At the platform, the pilings are complete and the “top-deck” will soon be installed.

The installations are being done with a special pipe-laying barge that is now offshore Kenai. The jack-up rig Spartan 151, under contract to Furie, is also stationed offshore, near the platform and is being used as a floating hotel for workers, Webb said.

Initial production will be from Furie’s Kitchen Lights Unit No. 1 well but two other wells will be brought into production in the first half of 2016, for a total of three wells supplying the contracted sales volumes.

Webb said the operation employed up to 400 workers in recent weeks but the workforce is now down to about 250. By the end of the year Furie will have invested about $500 million in its Kitchen Lights development, he said.

Furie’s development at Kitchen Lights has a long and complex history. The prospect was initially identified by Furie’s predessor company, Escopeta Oil and Gas, and its president, Danny Davis, an old-school oil exploration wildcatter from Texas.

Dwindling production of petroleum from Cook Inlet was becoming a concern but Davis and Escopeta’s geologists believed the Inlet has undiscovered resources, particularly in deeper waters that required a jack-up rig or floating drillship to explore.

Escopeta bid in state lease sales and acquired offshore acreage and Davis set about raising funds to bring a jack-up rig to Cook Inlet to drill untested offshore prospects, not only for Escopeta but for others as well.

An initial effort to bring a rig north in 2006 failed when Davis’ financing fell apart. A second effort, in 2010, was successful but the federal administration had meanwhile changed and an exemption from the U.S. Jones Act Davis had obtained from the Bush administration to use a foreign heavy-lift ship to move the rig was not renewed by the Obama administration.

Davis took a gamble that he could eventually persuade the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which administers the Jones Act, to renew the exemption, and had the Spartan 151 rig loaded on board a Chinese heavy-lift ship. The rig was then in U.S. Gulf of Mexico waters.

Davis continued efforts to get the exemption as the ship rounded Cape Horn and headed north in the Pacific. The rig was actually unloaded in Vancouver, B.C., for maintenance, and U.S.-owned tugs were hired to tow it to Cook Inlet.

Even through the journey was broken, so that the Chinese ship moved the rig from a U.S. to Canadian port, the federal government still ruled it a violation of the Jones Act and hit Escopeta with a $15 million fine.

Davis, who had pioneered the effort, essentially lost his job as president over the issue, and Escopeta’s investors took the company over, renaming it Furie Operating Alaska. Davis still retains a small royalty in the property, however.

Furie used the Spartan 151 rig to drill the first exploration wells at Kitchen Lights and Davis’s foresight was vindicated when a gas discovery was made.

 

Tim Bradner can be reached at tim.bradner@alaskajournal.com.

More in News

Montessori materials sit on shelves in a classroom at Soldotna Montessori Charter School on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022 in Soldotna, Alaska. (Ashlyn O’Hara/Peninsula Clarion)
Education debate draws state attention to peninsula charter schools

Dunleavy would like to see a shift of authority over charter school approvals from local school districts to the state

The Nikiski Senior Center stands under sunlight in Nikiski, Alaska, on Thursday, March 14, 2024. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)
Support available for community caregivers

Nikiski Senior Center hosts relaunched Kenai Peninsula Family Caregiver Support Program

Flags flank the entrance to Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s office on Thursday, March 14, 2024, in Juneau, Alaska. (Ashlyn O’Hara/Peninsula Clarion)
Dunleavy vetoes bipartisan education bill

Senate Bill 140 passed the House by a vote of 38-2 and the Senate by a vote of 18-1 last month

The Alaska State Capitol on Friday, March 1, 2024, in Juneau, Alaska. (Ashlyn O’Hara/Peninsula Clarion)
House passes bill altering wording of sex crimes against children

The bill is sponsored by Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer

Ben Meyer and Brandon Drzazgowski present to the Soldotna and Kenai Chambers of Commerce at the Soldotna Regional Sports Complex in Soldotna, Alaska, on Wednesday, March 13, 2024. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)
Kenai Watershed Forum gives update on streambank restoration

The watershed forum and other organizations are working to repair habitat and mitigate erosion

The entrance to the Kenai Police Department, as seen in Kenai, Alaska, on April 1, 2020. (Photo by Brian Mazurek/Peninsula Clarion)
Kenai resident arrested on charges of arson

Kenai Police and Kenai Fire Department responded to a structure fire near Mountain View Elementary

Sen. Jesse Bjorkman, R-Nikiski, speaks in opposition to an executive order that would abolish the Board of Certified Direct-Entry Midwives during a joint legislative session on Tuesday, March 12, 2024 in Juneau, Alaska. (Ashlyn O'Hara/Peninsula Clarion)
Legislature kills most of Dunleavy’s executive orders in rare joint session

All the proposed orders would have shuffled or eliminated the responsibilities of various state boards

Nikiski Middle/High School student Maggie Grenier testifies in favor of a base student allocation increase before the Alaska Senate Education Committee on Monday, Feb. 12, 2024, in Juneau, Alaska. (Screenshot)
Students report mixed responses from lawmakers in education discussions

Delegates from the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District lobbied the Alaska Legislature for more state funding and other education priorities

A child waves from the back of a truck as the 32nd annual Sweeney’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade proceeds down Fireweed Street in Soldotna, Alaska on Friday, March 17, 2023. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)
St. Patrick’s Day parade set for Sunday

The annual Sweeney’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, hosted by the Soldotna Chamber of Commerce, kicks off at 2 p.m.

Most Read