Pioneer Natural Resources plans to end a quest to produce coalbed methane (CBM) in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough of Alaska, a region once thought to hold 1 Tcf of natural gas, to focus its attention on North Slope activities.

Pioneer spokesman Pat Foley, manager of land, commercial and regulatory affairs, said the company will surrender all of its oil and natural gas resources in the “Mat-Su,” and will close its wells and leave the area by the end of the year.

Pioneer took over the leases after it bought Evergreen Resources Inc. last year. Evergreen had begun the CBM venture in 2001.

“It didn’t really fit in with the rest of our business in Alaska,” Foley told the Anchorage Daily News. “It just wasn’t something we wanted to do.”

Pioneer decided earlier this month to surrender the company’s leases in Cook Inlet and dissolve the unit, which covers about 72,000 acres of private and state-owned mineral leases.

Pioneer’s shallow-gas leases in the Rocky Mountains remain a prolific area for the producer. However, in March, Pioneer announced plans to contract with Doyon Drilling Inc. to build and operate a new, exploratory drilling rig on the North Slope. It also announced a $50 million exploration program on more than 1.6 million acres there.

Foley said that Pioneer has “a lot of business” that it wants to accomplish on the North Slope, and “we’re going to continue to do all of that.”

Area residents had protested the CBM program when Evergreen first began it, and Foley acknowledged that those concerns had been part of the decision to leave. “That was sort of an underlying thought throughout the whole process,” he told the News. “If companies are welcomed to do activity, they’re more likely to.”

©Copyright 2005Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.