HEX doubles Cook Inlet platform well capacity, plans to triple gas deliveries to ENSTAR in 2027

HEX LLC has doubled the well capacity of its Allegra Leigh Platform in Cook Inlet, from six wells to as many as 14, and plans to triple its firm gas deliveries to ENSTAR starting in April 2027, according to a press release issued Wednesday by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority. AIDEA is HEX's lender, holding a multi-year $50 million revolving line of credit to HEX Cook Inlet LLC. It released money from that line in May 2025 at a public board meeting where HEX president and chief executive John Hendrix briefed directors.

Firm gas is contracted volume a producer commits to deliver on demand rather than as available; HEX currently supplies ENSTAR 8.1 million cubic feet per day of it. The 2026 drilling campaign at the platform uses the Spartan 151 jack-up rig, which stands on legs lowered to the seabed, and a dual wellhead system that permits two wells from a single slot, and targets wells deeper than 9,000 feet.

HEX said its drilling season involves more than 25 local suppliers, that its cumulative Cook Inlet investment now exceeds $90 million, including roughly $50 million this year, and that in 2025 it doubled production and supplied about 10 percent of Cook Inlet gas from six wells. That share is its whole output; the 8.1 million is only what it has promised ENSTAR.

ENSTAR president John Sims told a Commonwealth North forum in Anchorage on June 5 that Cook Inlet now produces 60 to 70 billion cubic feet a year, down from more than 300 Bcf at its early-1990s peak, and that the firm Hilcorp contract carrying Southcentral expires in 2033. Cook Inlet producers supply gas to roughly 75 percent of Alaskans through the Railbelt, the linked grid running from Homer to Fairbanks.

The Alaska Division of Oil and Gas concluded that identified Cook Inlet volumes can meet demand of about 80 Bcf a year only until around 2030. That is about 220 million cubic feet a day, so HEX's tripled deliveries, roughly 24 million, would cover about a tenth of it. The Alaska Energy Authority has gone further, warning that the Railbelt cannot rely indefinitely on Cook Inlet gas and should diversify its energy sources to protect reliability and affordability.

HEX also announced a long-term agreement with Tyonek Native Corporation covering exploration on more than 5,000 acres of Tyonek surface estate, the surface rights rather than what lies beneath, with provisions on subsistence resources, employment and shareholder contracting.

The release contains only AIDEA's and HEX's accounts; no other party is quoted in it.