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Pt. Thomson road engineering under way PND wins design contract for Bullen Point Road from Prudhoe Bay east to Point Thomson unit, stops 10 miles short of ANWR Petroleum News
The state of Alaska is moving ahead with its Bullen Point Road, part of the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities’ industrial roads program and Gov. Frank Murkowski’s plan to expand the North Slope year-round gravel road system to accommodate development of oil and gas resources.
Anchorage-based PND Inc. has been hired to do the design work for the project, a 50-60 mile coastal road from the Dalton Highway at Prudhoe Bay to the ExxonMobil-operated Point Thomson unit, an undeveloped high-pressure condensate field on the eastern edge of North Slope state lands adjacent to the 1002 area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The road is expected to terminate about 10 miles from the 1002 area.
PND’s contract also includes putting together the information necessary to prepare a separate pipeline right of way application from Point Thomson to facilities in Prudhoe Bay.
The design work, which includes engineering, surveying geotechnical, hydrological and environmental services, is expected to take up the three years, Shannon McCarthy, the department’s northern region public information officer, told Petroleum News.
A separate consultant will be hired to do an environmental impact statement, work which is expected to take 18 months, McCarthy said.
Because of an old agreement with the state of Alaska, the original Point Thomson leases have been extended beyond their basic terms, awaiting a pipeline to connect the unit to the trans-Alaska oil pipeline at Prudhoe Bay. ExxonMobil, BP, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips are the major lease owners at Point Thomson, which is thought to hold 350 million to 450 million barrels of oil and condensate and 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Under terms of a 2001 Point Thomson unit expansion agreement development drilling must begin by June 15, 2006, or the state pockets $20 million. Economic project not identified But the Point Thomson owners said in 2004 that they have been unable to identify an economic stand-alone condensate project at Point Thomson, and would prefer instead to concentrate on designing a natural gas project in connection with ExxonMobil, BP and ConocoPhillips’ tentative plans to build a natural gas pipeline south from Prudhoe Bay to Canada and Lower 48 markets.
ExxonMobil told the state “a stand-alone project prior to gas sales is not economically viable under the current fiscal system.” The cost for producing and reinjecting the high-pressure gas was too great, the company said.
The unit owners tried to identify a smaller gas injection project which would be viable, but were unable to make it viable, the companies said in their review of the 2003-04 work plan.
In its spring revenue forecast the Alaska Department of Revenue said “if ultimate development of Point Thomson is not associated with a gas pipeline we believe first production could begin as soon as FY 2010-FY 2011.”
If, however, Point Thomson production was linked to a natural gas pipeline, “first production could be delayed until FY 2012 or beyond.”
Satellite fields in the Point Thomson area were forecast to come on line contributing an additional total 100 million barrels beginning in FY 2015.
PND subcontractors for the Bullen Point Road include Lounsbury and Associates, NANA/Colt Engineering, AES Lynx and Purcell Services.
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