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Chevron earns kudos for pit cleanup Project involved excavating huge volume of drilling wastes at Ivan River gas field; Alaska officials call it a job well done Wesley Loy For Petroleum News
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is commending Chevron for a cleanup operation at the Ivan River gas field.
The project involved excavating a reserve pit adjacent to the Ivan River pad within the Susitna Flats State Game Refuge.
Reserve pits once were commonly used in Alaska’s oil and gas fields to hold drilling wastes such as rock cuttings and drilling muds. Such pits are no longer in favor as the industry has moved to other methods for handling wastes, such as grinding them for injection underground.
To fulfill a corrective action plan for closure of the Ivan River pit, Chevron proposed removing a huge volume of drilling wastes and then backfilling the pit with gravel.
The project, years in the planning, required a “substantial commitment on Chevron’s part,” said a Jan. 10 letter of commendation Randy Bates, director of Fish and Game’s Habitat Division, sent to Chevron’s George Cowie.
“Extensive research was completed over the last several years and the project was well thought out and implemented,” the letter said. “Approximately 10,500 cubic yards of material were excavated from the pit and transported to a facility in Oregon via barge for proper disposal. A similar amount of gravel fill was transported in from an off-refuge location and replaced within the pit. This work took place over approximately four months during the summer and fall of 2012 with little impact to refuge resources or users.”
Revegetation planned The Ivan River field is on the west side of Cook Inlet, northeast of the ConocoPhillips-operated Beluga River gas field.
A number of wells were drilled at Ivan River following its discovery in 1966. Production didn’t start until 1990, however, after Unocal completed a pipeline to connect the field to the Enstar Natural Gas Co. line.
Chevron acquired the Ivan River field when it bought out Unocal in 2005. Hilcorp took over as Ivan River unit operator in January 2012 after it acquired Chevron’s Cook Inlet assets.
Chevron’s reserve pit cleanup involved filling “super sacks” with waste material, and then trucking the sacks off-site, according to the company’s permit from the Habitat Division. The sacks were designed to contain the waste safely for transport.
Between 500,000 and 900,000 gallons of water also were to be removed from the pit.
Come spring, the area will be revegetated.
Groundwater monitoring will take place for at least three years at the site, the permit said.
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