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North Slope Borough plans hydrate wells at gas fields near Barrow in 2010-11
The North Slope Borough is looking to hire a contractor for a drilling program in the winter of 2010-11 to look for methane hydrates at two natural gas fields near Barrow.
The project is part of a larger effort to study methane hydrate resources in the Arctic. The North Slope Borough is working on the effort with the U.S. Department of Energy.
The North Slope Borough plans to hire a contractor to start work in September 2010.
The contractor will drill as many as two test wells at the East Barrow gas field near the end of 2010 to test for hydrates. The field is 14 miles east of Barrow on gravel roads.
In early 2011, the contractor will move the equipment down ice and snow roads to the Walakpa Gas field some 15 miles southwest of Barrow to drill four to five wells.
Drilling at Walakpa is scheduled to wrap up between mid-April and early May.
Petrotechnical Resources Alaska is working with the borough and DOE on the project.
Broad application possible Methane hydrates, also known as gas hydrates, are molecules of methane trapped inside “cages” of ice to form crystals. Methane is the primary component of natural gas.
Swaths of Arctic Alaska are believed to be well suited for generating these hydrates. In recent years government and industry have stepped up efforts to try to produce them.
These efforts have largely focused on existing oil fields in the central North Slope, but an unusual phenomenon at the fields near Barrow led researchers to broaden the scope.
The natural gas fields around Barrow have provided the largest community on the North Slope with a nearby fuel supply that is not subject to the price swings troubling smaller rural communities across Alaska dependant on diesel fuel for heating and electricity.
Production hasn’t declined But despite producing for decades, these gas fields around Barrow have not seen the production declines typically associated with aging fields, like those in the Cook Inlet.
The leading theory is that the fields are regenerating themselves using methane hydrates.
The idea is this: Production of conventional gas supplies was, in fact, decreasing the pressure in the reservoir, but this pressure drop in turn “unlocked” the methane hydrates from their icy cages, leading to an increase in pressure and therefore in production, too.
So the borough and the DOE set out to search for methane hydrates in the fields.
The first phase of the research project, which ran from October 2006 to November 2008, provided “strong evidence” of hydrates at two of the three gas fields near Barrow.
Second phase in 2008 In December 2008, the DOE began the second phase of the project, which includes drilling a well to prove whether or not hydrates exist and can be produced commercially.
The DOE program will start with a well at East Barrow. If the well is unsuccessful, then DOE plans to drill at Walakpa. The North Slope Borough is planning some additional wells of its own, looking for a way to use East Barrow as a backup to Walakpa. That would allow the borough to shut the Walakpa field down in the summer for maintenance.
The project not only holds implications for the North Slope Borough, which subsidizes diesel for many of its communities and expects increased gas demand in Barrow, but also for developing methane hydrate resources in Canada, Russia and other parts of Alaska.
DOE is working on separate hydrate projects in Alaska with BP and ConocoPhillips.
In November 2008, the U.S. Geological Survey released a report saying the North Slope could contain between 25 trillion and 157 trillion cubic feet of methane hydrates.
—Eric Lidji
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