Cook Inlet / Kenai Peninsula Environment

History

beluga whales

Others explored the inlet prior to Captain James Cook’s 1778 expedition, but it was named after him in 1794. The Inlet stretches about 180 miles from the Gulf of Alaska to Anchorage in south-central Alaska. The area includes several national parks and the active volcano Mount Redoubt, along with three other historically active volcanoes. Roughly 400,000 people live in the Cook Inlet watershed.

The Inlet is rich in natural resources, including oil, gas and coal. Oil explorers drilled Alaska's first oil well in 1896 on the shores of Cook Inlet, southwest of present-day Anchorage. They found modest amounts of oil, insufficient to justify development. Private investors and the federal government explored for oil in many areas in the territory during the 1940s and 1950s, but no production ensued until the discovery of the Kenai Peninsula's Swanson River field in 1957. Oil companies built two refineries on the peninsula to process the oil.

The first and largest gas discovery came in 1959 with the Kenai field. In 1966, the largest number of wells drilled in the Inlet occurred, with over 35 being drilled. Production peaked in 1970, with roughly 300 MMBOE/day of oil and gas production. After the 1974 discovery of Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope, drilling and production have moved away from the Inlet. In fact, no new gas field has been discovered in the Cook Inlet since 1979 and no new oil field since 1991.


Cook Inlet Production Graph

Today

The Cook Inlet of Alaska is the second largest production area for oil and gas in the State of Alaska.

The Inlet is home to a variety of promising targets for hydrocarbons. Most were identified years ago by the majors, but never drilled because of the probability of natural gas and the lack of a market for it. The offshore opportunities in the Cook Inlet are attracting a new type of explorer: the Independent.


Alaska Natural Gas Prices:
Link to EIA website
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

View a map of Cook Inlet oil & gas activity for 2010 – 2011:
Download 0.5 MB PDF
Source: State of Alaska, Department of Natural Resources


snow inside car

By-passed targets range in water depth from 18 feet to 300 feet, with the vast majority being between 40 feet and 160 feet. The targets range in drilling depth from 8,000 feet to 22,000 feet. These wells are naturally pressured between 8,000 psi and 14,000 psi.

The Cook Inlet is prone to very strong currents, cold temperatures, and frequent ice flows creating manageable, but formidable, challenges for explorers that venture into the Inlet. Offshore operations are restricted to the drilling season which runs roughly from March-April to late November dependent on the location and in the Southern part of the Inlet you can almost drill year round. The AR1 is equipped to operate the maximum number of days available. The Inlet is also home to a number of different types of wildlife. The Beluga Whale is the primary wildlife of concern, as they are now classified as an endangered species.

Weather / Climate Resources