HEX Rebrands Inlet Operator Furie Under Parent Company Colors
The monopod Allegra Leigh pulls natural gas out of the Kitchen Lights Unit in Cook Inlet, next to the exploration drilling rig Spartan 151.
Photo Credit: HEX
After refurbishing and renaming a monopod platform in Cook Inlet, the state’s only Alaskan-owned natural gas producer is renaming the legacy company it bought the platform from. HEX LLC is rebranding its operations under a single name.
Furie Operating Alaska becomes HEX Operating, and HEX Cook Inlet becomes HEX Energy.
Consistent Identity
HEX was founded by John Hendrix, an oil industry veteran from Homer, in 2019, one month before he acquired Furie Operating Alaska for $15 million at a bankruptcy auction. Furie brought the Julius R platform to the Kitchen Lights Unit in 2015 and owned onshore assets in Nikiski as well.
Last year, HEX upgraded the platform and renamed it Allegra Leigh after Hendrix’s granddaughter. The company brought online two new gas wells producing more than 3 million cubic feet per day, and a third well in the Kitchen Lights Unit was reworked and returned to production.
“Through disciplined investment and a long-term commitment to Alaska, we have doubled our natural gas production and invested over $40 million locally into Alaska’s economy,” notes Hendrix, the president and CEO of HEX.
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June 2026
The rebranding reflects the company’s evolution and long-term strategic direction while creating a consistent identity across the HEX family of companies. While the names and visual identity are evolving, Hendrix says HEX’s core commitments to safety, operational excellence, teamwork, and community stewardship remain unchanged.
Hendrix adds, “HEX is strengthening energy security, proving Cook Inlet has reliable natural gas supply.” Citing US Geological Survey estimates, he points to the region’s 19 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which is about 244 years of consumption at today’s energy-use rates. Therefore, Hendrix believes the Cook Inlet basin has the infrastructure to supply 100 percent of Railbelt natural gas demand, even as Phase One of a North Slope natural gas pipeline promises to bring new energy to Southcentral by 2029.
Two HEX wells were the top natural gas producers in Cook Inlet last year. Due to the success of the 2025 drilling program, the company accelerated budgeting for up to four grassroots wells in 2026 and more in 2027 using the Spartan 151 jack-up rig in the Kitchen Lights Unit, a nearly 83,400-acre unit between Tyonek and Nikiski.
Furie itself was a rebranding of Escopeta Oil, a Texas-based company that arrived in Cook Inlet in 1999 and consolidated leases into the Kitchen Lights Unit. Escopeta was acquired by Cornucopia Oil & Gas Company in 2010 and brought Spartan 151 to Alaska from the Gulf of Mexico. However, Escopeta had hired a Chinese ship to haul the rig without a waiver from the Jones Act, the federal law that requires merchandise to move between domestic ports on US ships. In 2017, Furie was ordered to pay a $10 million fine, the largest ever for a Jones Act violation. In the meantime, German investors acquired Cornucopia and renamed the subsidiary Furie in 2012.
