Cook Inlet overview: powerful and positive effects on the region.

• Author: Bradner, Mike
• Position: OIL & GAS

Cook Inlet's "oil patch" is a busy place these days. Hilcorp Energy, a Houston-based independent company, has boosted oil and gas production in several of the aged oil fields the company purchased from Chevron and Marathon Oil in 2012 and 2013.

In December, 2013, Hilcorp was producing almost 11,000 barrels per day of oil, almost double what the fields it now owns were producing in 2012 when Hilcorp assumed ownership. Total Cook Inlet oil production has increased 50 percent from 2010 to about 15,000 barrels per day today.

At its peak in the 1970s, Cook Inlet produced 225,000 barrels per day.

In another development, Furie Alaska Operating, another independent also based in Houston, plans to install a new gas production platform and to lay undersea gas pipelines this summer. Furie is privately-owned and doesn't divulge much about its operations.

Meanwhile, Tesoro Petroleum Corporation is working on its plan to build a new cross-inlet oil pipeline, although its construction has been pushed back to next year. This project was initiated by Cook Inlet Energy, another independent redeveloping the small Redoubt Shoal field on the Inlet's west side, and subsequently taken over by Tesoro.

Finally, ConocoPhillips has reopened its liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant at Nikiski, near Kenai, and will send its first shipload of LNG to Japan in May. It is the first of six shipments planned for this year, ConocoPhillips spokeswoman Amy Burnett says.

On the downside, another independent company, Buccaneer Energy, has been hit with financial problems and has had to downsize its plan to aggressively explore several offshore Cook Inlet prospects.

The company still hopes to drill one important target this year, however. It is a potential deep oil prospect in ConocoPhillips' North Cook Inlet Unit. ConocoPhillips now produces natural gas from a gas field, but Buccaneer believes there is oil in deeper formations and hopes to test those in a "farm-out" arrangement with ConocoPhillips. Buccaneer still has some gas production from its small onshore Kenai Loop field, however.

BlueCrest Energy, another Texas-based independent, has plans to drill further tests at the Cosmopolitan oil and gas offshore prospect near Anchor Point. BlueCrest and Buccaneer made a gas discovery at Cosmopolitan, which also holds oil in a deeper reservoir, but the gas deposit must be further tested before it will be known whether it can be produced.

Armstrong Oil and Gas, another independent based in Denver, is also further developing its small North Fork field northeast of Homer. North Fork is now producing gas that is being transported through a small...