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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
August 2006

Vol. 11, No. 32 Week of August 06, 2006

White Hills drilling to be in 2007-08

Chevron looked at possibility of accelerating to 2006-07, but rig and permitting issues kept project on original schedule

By Alan Bailey

Petroleum News

Chevron has confirmed to Petroleum News that it is sticking with its plan to start drilling in its North Slope White Hills acreage in the winter of 2007-08. Petroleum News had heard of an accelerated plan to drill in the winter of 2006-07. Roxanne Sinz, manager of public relations and communications for Chevron in Alaska, said that the company had discounted the accelerated program, in the interests of allowing sufficient time to effectively manage what the company considers to be a critical project.

“A feasibility study was performed to determine if the initial drilling program could be accelerated into the 2006-07 drilling season,” Sinz said. “The technical team concluded that accelerating the project was not in Chevron’s best interests as many critical issues such as rig solutions, permitting and logistics, etc. had to be addressed in a very short timeframe. Failure to address these critical issues would have a significant negative impact on the project.”

White Hills tracts acquired in '01, '06

Chevron has state leases on 68 tracts in the White Hills area, west of the Sagavanirktok River, south of the Kuparuk River field and southwest of the Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska’s central North Slope. Unocal acquired the initial White Hills tracts in 2001 and an additional 48 tracts in the March 1 State of Alaska North Slope areawide lease sale.

The White Hills area is close to the 1966 Susie well that Richfield drilled just prior to the discovery of Prudhoe Bay. That well had oil shows and the area is thought to be prospective for oil and gas.

“The (Susie) well was unsuccessful but there is still significant interest in that area for oil,” former State of Alaska Division of Oil and Gas Director Mark Myers told Petroleum News. “The oil stained outcrops … around Sagwon Bluffs illustrate the area contains oil.”

White Hills targets, he said, would include the Cretaceous sands, including the Kuparuk River formation.

Good oil shows in area wells

Paul Decker, petroleum geologist with the Division of Oil and Gas, said that the Chevron acreage includes Unocal’s Amethyst well and BP’s Malguk well. These wells penetrated thick Upper Cretaceous deepwater turbidite sands with good oil and gas shows, he said. The same Cretaceous interval also had shows in Phillips’ Heavenly 1 well to the north of the other two wells and the same sands may extend north of the Heavenly well, within Chevron acreage.

“This sand package is well positioned to receive hydrocarbon charge. It lies close to and stratigraphically above the HRZ and Hue Shale source rock units — rich, oil prone shales at oil to gas window maturities in this area,” Decker said. l






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