Orion pool rules expansion in works

Prudhoe Bay field operator BP Exploration (Alaska) has applied to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission for an amendment of pool rules for Orion, a Schrader Bluff oil reservoir and one of the western Prudhoe satellite fields. The amendment would expand the area covered by the pool rules by including portions of ADL 390067, an adjacent lease to the north of the Prudhoe Bay unit.

This expansion has been in the works for some time.

In February the Alaska Department of Natural Resources approved an expansion of the Prudhoe Bay unit in the Orion area, adding 1,000 acres within ADL 390067, but declining to expand the Orion participating area until BP presented well data showing the proposed PA-expansion area is capable of producing in paying quantities.

The Orion participating area, formed in 2004, includes portions of 14 leases, some 18,842 acres, and is being developed from Prudhoe Bay pads L, V and Z.

At the time DNR’s Division of Oil and Gas approved the acreage expansion, no wells had been drilled in the expansion area.

BP has now received drilling permits from AOGCC for a multilateral development well, L-203, with laterals L-203L1 through L-203L5, to be drilled from L pad to bottomhole locations in tracts south and west of the ADL 390067 expansion acreage.

—Kristen Nelson