More than $1.8B invested at Pt. Thomson

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Alliance gets update on initial production facility work at eastern North Slope field — what’s planned for this winter, next year

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

Some $1.8 billion has been invested at Point Thomson through October, Gina Dickerson, ExxonMobil’s senior project manager at Point Thomson, told the Alaska Support Industry Alliance’s Meet Alaska conference Jan. 10, with a total of $4 billion projected by the time the initial production facility goes online in 2016.

The development, the most easterly on the North Slope, is a gas cycling project which will produce up to 10,000 barrels per day of condensate, with gas being reinjected into the reservoir.

For this year’s work, the 48-mile ice road from Endicott is going in, and expected to be open by the end of January, Dickerson said.

The airstrip was completed in September, replacing what had been just a helipad. With no permanent road to Point Thomson and a limited barging season, “logistics are fairly complicated” and the completion of the airstrip was significant for the project, she said.

This winter the pad will be extended, with gravel haul for that project, and the sealift bulkhead will be finished. Facility modules will be offloaded there when they come in by sealift, she said.

Supporting foundations for support buildings are going in, including the Alaska Clean Seas building and maintenance buildings, as well as well pads and three permanent bridges.

Vertical support members for the export pipeline were installed last winter, Dickerson said, and the 12-inch export pipeline and five miles of gathering lines will be installed this winter. The export pipeline will connect Point Thomson with an existing line at Badami. A permanent camp also went in last year.

The peak workforce on the North Slope this winter will be about 700, she said. The total workforce last year — including the North Slope — was more than 1,100, “and we expect to surpass that this year,” Dickerson said.

2015 facility modules

Three wells are planned, one production well and two injection wells, all directionally drilled.

The gas processing facility modules will come in by barge in the summer of 2015, Dickerson said, “and we’ll connect those like Legos to make that gas processing facility.”

The initial production facility will have the capacity to cycle 200 million cubic feet of natural gas per day, producing 10,000 barrels per day of condensate. The export gas pipeline has a capacity of 70,000 bpd.

She described the project as “the foundation of future development on the North Slope and integral to the LNG project.”

“By 2016,” Dickerson said, “we’ll be producing through the initial production system and into TAPS.”

Not only will the project “add 10,000 barrels a day of liquids in 2016 into TAPS, but we have been building the foundation for the future of Alaska LNG,” she said.

The field, discovered in 1977 some 60 miles east of Prudhoe Bay, covers some 150 square miles. The Thomson sand reservoir holds an estimated 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 200 million barrels of condensate.