BP’s Northstar oil field returned to production yesterday, after having been shut down Feb. 17 following discovery of a pinhole leak in gas piping in the field’s gas compression facility.
The Northstar shutdown dropped Alaska North Slope oil production to an average of 774,837 barrels per day for February, a 2.67 percent drop from the January average of 796,121 bpd.
Northstar came back up late yesterday, BP Exploration (Alaska) spokesman Daren Beaudo told Petroleum News this afternoon. He said that as of this morning, the production rate at Northstar was back up to 33,000 bpd.
Northstar production had averaged 44,234 bpd for the first 16 days of February; the overall monthly average was 27,013 bpd, a 42.8 percent drop from January average production at the field of 47,192 bpd.
Production from the BP-operated Lisburne field averaged 20,816 bpd in February, up 4.4 percent from a January average of 19,935 bpd. Endicott production, which includes some 33,000 bpd of Prudhoe Bay Flow Station 2 crude, averaged 51,969 bpd, up 4 percent from a January average of 49,945 bpd.
Prudhoe Bay averaged 352,522 bpd in February, up 0.5 percent from a January average of 350,871 bpd.
Production at BP’s Milne Point field averaged 29,681 bpd in February, down 5 percent from a January average of 31,255 bpd. Production from the ConocoPhillips Alaska-operated Kuparuk River field averaged 164,626 bpd in February, down 1.8 percent from a January average of 167,711 bpd.
The ConocoPhillips-operated Alpine field averaged 128,210 bpd in February, down 0.8 percent from a January average of 129,212 bpd.
Editor’s note: See full story in the March 11 issue of Petroleum News, available online (www.PetroleumNews.com) this Friday at noon Alaska Time.
