ALASKA TRENDS

Tikahtnu means “big water river” or “ocean river” in Dena’ina Athabascan, referring to the inlet from the northern Pacific Ocean that Captain James Cook entered in 1778. The British Admiralty was hoping Cook would discover the Northwest Passage, but his only achievement in Alaska was completing maps of the coastline begun by Russian and Spanish explorers.

Cook was unable to appreciate the treasure buried beneath the big water river. Geologic forces created hydrocarbon reservoirs below the silty seabed. Unocal tapped that resource in 1959, discovering a major natural gas field not far from Swanson River, where Richfield Oil had drilled a successful well two years earlier. It wasn’t the first such discovery in Alaska; the tiny village of Katalla, across the mouth of the Copper River from Cordova, became a boom town after a gusher in 1902, but production ended thirty years later when the local refinery burned down.

Katalla was always considered too remote to become Alaska’s industrial heart, but the oil and gas from the Tikahtnu region had the advantage of proximity to the newborn state’s population center. Anchorage, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, and Kenai Peninsula owe their prosperity to the energy pumped out of the big water river. Natural gas supplies electricity and heat; without it, the region might depend on coal mined from Healy or the smoky bluffs of Kachemak Bay.

This edition of Alaska Trends quantifies the riches of natural gas from Cook’s inlet. The resource has lately lagged behind the region’s demand, as described in this month’s article “Running on Fumes” by Alexandra Kay, but it’s not exhausted yet, and new explorers are working hard to keep the flame burning.

SOURCES: blm.gov/programs/energy-and-minerals/oil-and-gas/about/alaska/Cook-Inlet-Units dggs.alaska.gov/energy/cook-inlet.html

Alaska Natural Gas Marketed Production Over Time

5 Exploratory Units

BLM-Alaska currently administers five exploratory units ( Beluga River, Birch Hill, Beaver Creek, Kenai, and Swanson River) in Southcentral Alaska.

27 Leases

There are 27 federal leases in these units (these units include federal, state, CIRI, and fee leases) totaling 16,766.77 acres.

11 Wells

Eleven grassroots wells have been drilled in the Kenai Unit.

3rd Largest Producer

Alaska is the third-largest natural gas producer in the United States after Texas and Pennsylvania. Alaska reinjects more of that natural gas back into the ground than in any other state.

Hilcorp for the Win

Hilcorp Alaska operates all of the federal Cook Inlet units. Its efforts to increase oil and gas production from mature fields have proven successful.

Sedimentology and Stratigraphy of Economically Significant Formations