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DOG approves drilling of hydrate well
The new test well is planned to be drilled by BP in December from a gravel pad in the western part of the Prudhoe Bay unit Alan Bailey Petroleum News
Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas has issued a notice, approving a change to BP’s plan of operations for the Prudhoe Bay unit, to enable the drilling of a new methane hydrate test well in the unit. As previously reported in Petroleum News, the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has already issued a permit for the drilling of the well. According to the division notice the plan is to drill from a small existing gravel pad, adjacent the Spine Road, about one mile north of Z pad, in the western part of the unit.
The notice says that BP plans to use gravel to level the pad in November, in preparation for starting drilling of the well during the first half of December. Drilling would be completed and the rig demobilized by mid-January.
Petroleum News understands that the purpose of the well will be to conduct long-term testing of natural gas production from hydrates in the subsurface at the well location. However, no information is publicly available about the drilling and testing plan, or about how the project is being funded. The division notice says that, if the well encounters hydrates and a decision is made to conduct hydrate testing, the well will be completed as a monitoring well, with future operations being separately permitted.
Both BP and ConocoPhillips have been involved with the U.S. Department of Energy in previous North Slope methane hydrate research. The Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp. has also been involved in the research.
Potential gas source Methane hydrate is a solid in which molecules of methane, the primary component of natural gas, are concentrated inside a lattice of water molecules. Huge quantities of the material, which remains stable within a certain range of relatively high pressures and low temperatures, are known to exist around the base of the permafrost under the North Slope. If the technical feasibility and economic viability of sustained gas production from the hydrates can be demonstrated, the hydrates could become a major new source of gas supplies - the results from hydrate testing on the North Slope could have implications for developing hydrate resources elsewhere in the world.
Short-term gas production from hydrates has been demonstrated from previous hydrate test wells, including a test well on the North Slope. But long-term production has yet to be achieved. Intriguingly, sustained gas production from the Barrow gas fields at the western end of the North Slope is thought to be underpinned by the disassociation of methane hydrate in the field reservoir - this theory, if correct, would suggest that sustained production from hydrates is possible.
In 2008 the U.S. Geological Survey estimated the possibility of 85 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas from North Slope gas hydrates.
- ALAN BAILEY
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