HEX Group has announced that the company was awarded a total of seven tracts in the Alaska Department of Natural Resources Division of Oil and Gas Cook Inlet Areawide 2021 Competitive Oil and Gas Lease Sale. The awarded tracts are located both offshore and onshore and comprise a total of 24,950.28 acres across three separate project areas.
HEX Group CEO John Hendrix:
“Right now, we own the Kitchen Lights Unit, which has 83,500 acres and we produce 15 million a day. From one small, the smallest, the newest platform in the Cook Inlet, you need to, just like any portfolio, just like any financial or resource-wise, you need to diversify. We wanted to shore up our base in the Kitchen Lights and protect our flank and we wanted to also look at some other plays, gas on land and maybe oil development on land. That’s why we, you saw the stuff on the North Kenai road that we just purchased, and the North Fork area that, for some reason, the state had up for lease, and we bid on it and we won it, but now they’re saying that it’s probably isn’t going to be available, but we had to do it because it was available, and we paid a pretty penny for it too.”
HEX Group acquired four tracts offshore Cook Inlet adjacent to the Kitchen Lights Unit and Julius R production platform. An onshore tract was awarded to the HEX Group over the North Fork Unit. An additional two tracts onshore and offshore were awarded in the vicinity of the Birch Hill Unit.
Hendrix says it’s about improved production and increased savings:
“Yeah, diversify. We went from no employees in the Cook Inlet to now we have, probably 16. 21 employees total in the state of Alaska before our predecessor company Furie (called Furie Operating Alaska LLC). The guys in the field called us Furie Blue because Furie before was Furie Red. It’s nice to, I mean I’m from Homer, it’s nice to bring jobs to the Peninsula. Our hub is right there in Nikiski and we have a production facility there. We have people working at that production facility and, really, we could do more with the people we have. So, let’s optimize with what we have. Let’s give our guys the incentive, they had real fun with this lease and understand that we’re more than just one platform out in Cook Inlet that we can do more, but that gives us a foundation to build from. That’s why we also bought adjacent acreage to the Kitchen Lights Unit.”
Hendrix says that the company will review its operations and budget plans for the acquired acreage in the third and fourth quarters of 2021.