Fowler Oil and Gas (fka FWOG)

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Fowler hopes to drill for methane at the state fairgrounds.

Fowler


http://www.adn.com/money/story/9228398p-9144215c.html

FOWLER OIL & GAS CORP.: The company eyes placing a well on Alaska State Fairgrounds land too.

By ZAZ HOLLANDER
[e-mail]

Published: August 17, 2007
Last Modified: August 17, 2007 at 07:21 AM


PALMER -- Until it gets results from a new coal bed methane well proposed for a hay field along Trunk Road, Fowler Oil & Gas Corp. isn't doing any other drilling.

But that's not stopping the company from doing the legwork for other potential wells to ply coal seams for the chief component in natural gas, including one at the Alaska State Fairgrounds and another in the Edgerton Parks Road area.

Company chairman and CEO Bob Fowler hopes this fall to sink a pilot well on 840 acres owned by the Kircher family and three others on Trunk Road, near the intersection with Bogard Road.

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough Planning Commission must first approve a conditional-use permit.

A public hearing is scheduled Oct. 1.

If his company secures a permit, drilling would take about a month, Fowler told a gathering of the Greater Palmer Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday. Within about six months, he would know if the well was a success.

Then he would start working on permits for more, Fowler said.

Fowler hopes to drill for methane at the state fairgrounds.

He needs a lease from the nonprofit that runs the Alaska State Fair, as well as permission from a number of adjacent landowners, because state and borough rules require 640 acres for each methane well.

The fair hired Anchorage-based attorney Dean Thompson and environmental consultant Hart Crowser to analyze the legal, operational and environmental aspects of the project, said Ray Ritari, the fair general manager.

So far, the review hasn't revealed any issues and fair staff are negotiating a final contract with Fowler, Ritari said.

The fair's seven-member board could review the contract at a Sept. 13 meeting, or later.

The methane well -- as well as a completely separate proposed gas-fired plant -- would sit on about 20 acres now used for storage and greenhouses east and north of Hermon Brothers Field, Ritari said.

The well site would be shielded by trees and out of view, he said.

"We do truly want to be good neighbors. We don't want to create a problem," Ritari said.

Evergreen Resources Inc. tried four years ago to drill for methane in the Valley, only to be dogged by public criticism and poor results.

Fowler promises his operation will avoid the clanking compressor noise, industrial landscape and water disposal problems that skeptics found fault with in Colorado-based Evergreen.

Instead of numerous wells, the subcontractor used by the company sinks one main shaft and hundreds of horizontal branches to probe coal seams.

Fowler plans to use buried pipes to send gas to Enstar Natural Gas Co. lines, deposit water from coal seams into deeper sandstone layers, and shield the well site itself from view with a shed that looks like a Colony barn.

But at some point, Fowler will run up against one issue that challenged Evergreen: wanting to drill for gas on property where the state owns the subsurface but a private landowner lives above.

All four families involved in the Kircher unit own the mineral rights beneath their property.

But at one potential well site in the area of Edgerton Parks Road, the state owns some of the subsurface rights, Fowler said.

Fowler will have to get surface-use agreements from the landowners without mineral rights, he said.

Then the company will apply for state leases to access the gas.

A surface owner does get some royalties, Fowler said.

Fowler offers a 20 percent royalty based on gross revenues at the wellhead to people who own both surface and mineral rights, according to material the company filed with the borough.

The surface royalty portion of that is 7.5 percent.