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BP to sign Liberty MOU with MMS, Corps
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
BP Exploration (Alaska) is doing final conceptual design for its Liberty project offshore the North Slope between Endicott and Badami, Randal Buckendorf, a senior attorney with the company, told the House Special Committee on Oil and Gas Jan. 31.
Buckendorf, taking part in a presentation on North Slope permitting by the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, said BP will sign a memorandum of understanding with the Corps of Engineers and the Minerals Management Service soon to begin work to supplement the Liberty environmental impact statement done from 1998 to 2002.
MMS spokeswoman Robin Cacy said Feb. 1 that the agency is close to signing the MOU, but hasn’t signed it yet.
Buckendorf said the State of Alaska is expected to sign on to the MOU in the next month.
BP will spend 2006 doing final conceptual level engineering and putting together a permitting plan, he said. The company is “going through an extensive pre-application process” and plans to turn in a draft development plan to MMS and the Corps in late December, and start supplemental EIS work in the second quarter of 2007. Extended reach drilling BP’s original plan was to twin Northstar, developed from an island, Buckendorf said, but after 20 pieces of litigation were filed against Northstar, BP decided to hold off on Liberty.
BP re-designed Liberty, first looking at something like what Pioneer Natural Resources is doing at Oooguruk, an offshore island with no processing.
But just in the last year, he said, “because of developments worldwide with extended reach drilling,” BP rethought the project and now plans a single onshore drill pad with wells up to eight miles to reach the reservoir. The project will be the first of its kind on the North Slope and probably in the United States, he said. Three-phase (oil, gas and water) will go to shore for processing, probably to BP’s Badami facility, and through the Badami pipeline.
Liberty will be a world-class extended reach drilling program, he said, and because of that BP thinks it will need a road to the facility.
Buckendorf said BP drilling people “from all over the world are trying to get here because it will move current technology to where it hasn’t gone before,” with both producing and injection wells going out eight miles, “well beyond the current envelope of technology.”
BP estimates two and a half to three years for final permits.
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