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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
April 2011

Vol. 16, No. 14 Week of April 03, 2011

ExxonMobil in Alaska: An almost invisible partner

Snapshots of ExxonMobil’s activities in Alaska’s oil and gas sector

Kay Cashman

Publisher & executive editor, Petroleum News

In doing the research for this publication — snapshots of ExxonMobil’s involvement in Alaska — we discovered several interesting things about the company and its predecessors:

• A little known fact is that ExxonMobil, like most oil and gas companies, has been in Alaska off and on since it opened its first field office in 1921.

• During that time, ExxonMobil has operated numerous exploration wells all over the state, and been a partner in many more wells. Turn to page 90 for a list of ExxonMobil-operated wells, most of them expensive exploration wells, drilled in almost all of Alaska’s oil and gas prone regions, including the Cook Inlet basin; the Navarin, St. George and St. Matthew-Hall basins of the Bering Sea; the Alaska Peninsula and Bristol Bay of the North Aleutian basin; the Gulf of Alaska basin; the Norton Sound basin; the Yukon Flats basin; the Copper River basin; the Beaufort Sea, Brooks Range Foothills and North Slope.

• ExxonMobil seldom touts its accomplishments as a very active, non-operating partner in Alaska.

• The mega-major has always been well-funded and that made a huge difference in its partnership with Richfield Oil, ARCO’s predecessor. All the other key players were leaving northern Alaska, but ExxonMobil’s financial strength allowed the ARCO/Humble team to drill one last well — the Prudhoe Bay discovery well, a location that was selected by Humble geologists.

• ExxonMobil has been a leader in technological research and application in the oil and gas industry, especially in the Arctic.

• It takes a long-term view regarding its oil and gas projects, which results in consistency in investment decisions, first-rate project execution and applying best practices around the world.

• The company’s organizational structure encourages the effective sharing of ideas, technology and best practices with its partners, which has made a huge difference in Alaska.

For example, in the design of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline challenges associated with the operation of a warm pipeline in an unstable permafrost environment were solved by using ExxonMobil technology, elevating the pipe above ground and using pipes to transfer heat from below ground to the air in winter.

In 1990, ExxonMobil’s heat pipe work on the trans-Alaska pipeline was recognized by the United States Space Foundation with an Outstanding Achievement Award for civilian applications of NASA technology.

Also, ExxonMobil’s enhanced oil recovery technologies, including tailored well-stimulation programs, full-field reservoir simulation and special core analysis capabilities have been critical to increasing Prudhoe Bay conventional oil reserves by approximately 30 percent over initial estimates.

ExxonMobil continues to assess opportunities for additional recovery improvements at the production units in which it is a partner, but not an operator — Prudhoe Bay, where it is the largest owner; Kuparuk River; and Duck Island, which includes Endicott.

As a partner, ExxonMobil often pushed exploration and development. An example is Point McIntyre, in the Prudhoe Bay unit. Without two ExxonMobil geologists using new technology to look at the characteristics of the field, and a very aggressive company agent forcing operator ARCO to drill a third exploration well after two busts, the field might not have been developed for years.

In the aftermath of its 1989 oil spill, ExxonMobil doubled its commitment to safeguarding the environment and employees. In 1992, it developed a rigorous worldwide management system called the Operations Integrity Management System.

ExxonMobil is in the process of developing the Point Thomson oil and gas field on the eastern North Slope, where it will operate a producing field in Alaska for the first time.

Who knows where that will lead?






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