By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, May 29 -- Natural gas production from the Devonian Muskwa shale in Northeast British Columbia's Horn River basin should start in July with another well pad coming on by yearend.
EnCana Corp., Calgary, plans to begin sales through a dehydration station shared with partner Apache Corp., Houston, via a 41-mile, 24-in. pipeline to a tie-in point with Spectra Energy at Cabin Lake, BC.
Apache, meanwhile, plans to start gas production by yearend from its D-70-K pad in the Ootla River area.
EnCana and Apache each operates 50% of their 400,000 gross acre position in the emerging shale play.
EnCana is drilling on pad style development programs in the Two Island Lake area. By the end of April it had completed two of the eight horizontal Muskwa wells it had drilled and cased and planned to drill three more wells this year. The other wells are to be completed by mid-summer, Apache said.
Apache, with two rigs in place, has batch set surface casing on 16 planned wells and drilled and cased the first two with 5,000-ft laterals. All 16 are to be drilled before frac operations are mobilized, and frac jobs are to start by September.
Apache said it plans to increase the number of fracs per well because a 2008 well in which it ran 10 frac stages, the most yet in an Apache well in the basin, is still making more than 4 MMcfd after 7 months on production.