BLM wraps up work on East Teshekpuk

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management finished cleaning up the East Teshekpuk No. 1 legacy well on April 17.

The well is the second cleaned up by the federal agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior, which contracted the project out to Marsh Creek LLC, an Alaska Native company based in Anchorage and Kaktovik.

Starting in early February, Marsh Creek excavated around 1,500 cubic yards of drilling mud from an old reserve pit and trucked it to North Kilikpik, an inactive drill pad about 17 miles to the east.

The company removed about 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel stored in the well bore to prevent freezing, and also moved about 50 cubic yards of scrap metal from a site near East Teshekpuk to the Oxbow Landfill. The remaining waste went to Deadhorse.

The East Teshekpuk No. 1 well sits on a peninsula jutting into the eastern edge of Teshekpuk Lake, the largest freshwater lake in the Alaska. Decades of high winds uncovered buried waste at the well site and threatened to dump it into the lake.

The cleanup is part of a longer-term effort to prevent environmental disasters at old well sites, many drilled by the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Geological Survey in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

The 136 legacy wells managed by the BLM are prioritized by need and scheduled for cleanup as federal funding becomes available.

—Petroleum News