By Tim Bradner
Alaska Journal of Commerce

Two new exploration wells, searching for gas, are planned this winter on the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge on the Kenai Peninsula in Southcentral Alaska, companies involved said.

Marathon Oil Co. will drill its Sunrise prospect on privately owned lands within the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. The well is about six miles east of the Swanson River oil field, a long-producing field that is also within the refuge.

Small independent company Nordaq Energy also plans a well in the same area, also on private lands.

Marathon plans to begin drilling in December using a company-owned rig, Carri Lockhart, the company's Alaska manager, said in an interview.

Nordaq is still working to finalize federal permits needed for its well, according to company president Bob Warthen. A drill rig had not yet been selected, he said.

Chevron Corp. is evaluating a third potential gas prospect at Birch Hill, in an area north of Swanson River. The company will evaluate the condition of an existing well drilled by Unocal, now part of Chevron, in the 1960s at Birch Hill but not produced, company spokeswomen Roxanne Sinz said.

Prospects being tested by Marathon and Nordaq Energy are on subsurface leases with Cook Inlet Region Inc., an Anchorage-based Alaska Native regional corporation that owns surface and subsurface lands in Southcentral Alaska, including prospective tracts within the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

Chevron's Birch Hills leases are on subsurface lands owned by Tyonek Native Corp., an Alaska Native village corporation, but it is also within the Kenai refuge.

Although the small Swanson River oil field has produced from within the refuge for 50 years - it was Alaska's first commercial oil discovery - recent exploration in the area had been stymied by a combination of high costs and complex federal permitting requirements.

Marathon has worked on permits for its Sunrise exploration program since 2000, according to Kim Cunningham, lands and resources manager for Cook Inlet Region Inc.

Although the subsurface estate is owned by CIRI the surface lands are owned and managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and although surface entry is allowed to explore and develop CIRI-owned subsurface prospects the permits for access must follow rigid U.S. Fish and Wildlife rules, Cunningham said.

State geologists believe the wildlife refuge may hold some of the most prospective acreage for gas discoveries in southern Alaska that have not yet been explored, said Kevin Banks, director of the Division of Oil and Gas.

Other parts of the Kenai Peninsula and on state-owned lands on the west side of Cook Inlet are well explored and several discoveries have been made in recent years, Banks said. However, the wildlife refuge has seen little drilling mainly because of the complex federal permitting, he said.

There are also possible gas and oil prospects in deeper offshore tracts of Cook Inlet, but testing those will require a jack-up rig or drill ship to be brought to the Inlet, Banks said.

Tim Bradner can be reached at

tim.bradner@alaskajournal.com.