Test well yields natural gas

Skamokawa’s got gas. That’s the word from Venoco Gas and Oil. The quality and amount however are so to speak, up in the air.

Venoco Gas and Oil Company slipped into Skamokawa valley shortly before spring of this year and started drilling two exploratory wells to look for methane gas.

One site is located on Longview Fibre land along Middle Valley Road; the other is on Department of Natural Resource Land on East Valley Road.

“A permit was issued to Venoco to drill an exploratory test well on DNR land after the company complied with all the rules and regulations and qualified the job site through the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) and the DNR,” said Dave Norman, spokesman for the Department of Natural Resources.

Michael G. Edwards, Vice President for Corporate & Investor Relations at Venoco said their drilling was more about testing the area for gas than actually finding any.

The Venoco crew sent their diamond-tipped drill bits down to about 700 feet looking for clues about the terrain and any natural gas deposits in the area.

“The simplest form of gas is methane,” said Edwards. “It is the simplest hydrocarbon molecule.”

Edwards said there can be varying degrees of gas purity as other hydrocarbon gasses like oxygen and nitrogen mix with the methane.

“The gas quality we encountered in Skamokawa was good so it wouldn’t require any special processing to make it marketable,” said Edwards.

Currently Venoco scientists and geologists are compiling the data to see if there is enough gas in Skamokawa Valley to make the whole process commercially viable.

Edwards said ‘Commercial quantities’ means there is enough volume of gas to sell to cover all of Veneco's costs – from drilling, transporting and marketing as well as overhead, and to earn a profit. The exact amount needed varies with the price of natural gas and the costs and expenses.

“Our drilling results confirm the big picture concepts that the necessary elements exist for hydrocarbon accumulation in this area,” said Edwards.

Venoco's testing revealed Skamokawa Valley has the basic deposits of organic matter planted millions of years ago, then covered with layer upon layer of sediment, at the right depth and temperature to allow for the accumulation of natural gas.

Data from wells helps Venoco's geoscientists correlate their theories with the actual geological information. For example, the scientists expect to encounter a certain type of rock at level-x below the surface, but drilling shows it was actually encountered at level-y, so Venoco adjusts and re-interprets the data to form a more accurate model of the Skamokawa area.

Edwards said the geoscientists are also looking at the bigger picture when they consider the whole area's geologic features and what typically defines the extent of the basin.

“The Astoria basin covers a couple hundred thousand acres, but for now we are only doing detailed computer modeling on that portion of the basin that covers Wahkiakum and neighboring Cowlitz Counties,” Edwards said.

Edwards said that after about a month of drilling, Venoco's crews collected enough data from the wells to determine the area's value as a gas producer. “We haven’t left ,” said Edwards, “we’re just not conducting any operations for now.”