Buccaneer Energy Limited today announced that its Cosmo # 1 well, offshore Alaska, spud at approximately midday EST on 13 May 2013 (Sydney) and is currently at 600’ drilling ahead.
The Cosmopolitan Project (“Cosmo”) is located in 80’ feet of water approximately 30 miles to the north west of Homer. Cosmo is jointly owned with privately owned Fort Worth, Texas based BlueCrest Energy II, LP (“BlueCrest”) owning a 75% working interest and Buccaneer a 25% working interest, with Buccaneer as the Operator for the project.
The well is being drilled with the Endeavour jack-up rig.
The Cosmo # 1 well is a vertical well that has a targeted Total Vertical Depth of 8,000’ (“TVD”), the well is anticipated to take approximately 45 days to drill and test.
Surface casing will be set at 800’ after which the well will be drilled to the top of the Tyonek Formation (“Tyonek”) at 2,000’ where casing will again be set. The first gas Tyonek gas zone should be intersected at approximately 2,150’ with multiple gas zones anticipated intersected to 6,000’.
Casing will be set at approximately 6,000’ before drilling through the proven oil bearing Starichkof and Hemlock Formations, and will reached the target depth of 8,000’ after drilling the prospective West Foreland Formation. The current plan is to take oil cores to augment the reservoir data to further optimize the future oil plan of development. At this stage it is not planned to flow test the oil formations.
On completion of drilling and logging operations the well will be plugged back to the bottom of the Tyonek gas formation. Gas zones within the Tyonek Formation that are identified as potentially commercial through drilling and logging will then be perforated and flow tested. If successfully tested the well will be temporary abandoned as a future gas producer.