Chevron Corp said yesterday it started pumping natural gas from the second of two prolific wells it drilled in the southern part of Canada's rugged Northwest Territories and hoped to lift output to capacity rates in a month.
Chevron unit Chevron Canada Resources said the Fort Liard-area well in southwestern Northwest Territories, called M-25, was producing at 35 million cubic feet a day, one month ahead of schedule, and it planned to increase output to 50 million cubic feet a day over the next week.
After pumping that rate for a month, the company and its partners were slated
to determine whether the gas could be produced at 75 million cubic feet a day,
just above the rate at which the first Fort Liard well, called K-29, is producing.
The K-29 well and followup M-25, eight kilometres to the south, drilled over the past two years, have been touted as among the most prolific onshore gas finds ever in Canada. The drilling success was responsible for a land rush among energy firms in the remote area, located just north of the Northwest
Territories-British Columbia border.
The first well made headlines last month when a calculation error led Chevron
and its partners, which include a host of Canadian oil and gas explorers such as Berkley Petroleum Corp and Purcell Energy Ltd, to believe it was hit by production problems when it actually was not.
"Production from these prolific wells meets several major goals for Chevron,"
Chevron Canada president Jim Simpson said in a statement. "It strongly positions our company in an exciting new region and provides an excellent balance to our existing producing assets in Western Canada and offshore East Coast."
Chevron is operator and has a 43.4 per cent stake in the two wells. Purcell has
24 per cent and Berkley has 21 per cent. Among the other partners are Anderson
Exploration Ltd, Paramount Resources Ltd and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.