ExxonMobil in Alaska: Granite Point expands to include seventh well

Mobil Oil press release — February 7, 1968

Mobil Oil Corporation has completed the seventh producing well on its offshore oil drilling and producing platform in the Cook Inlet of Alaska, bringing the total production from the platform to about 24,000 barrels a day. The seventh well flowed at the initial rate of 2,800 barrels a day.

Mobil is the operator for itself and Union Oil Company of California [today part of Chevron] and has 75 percent interest in the Granite Point lease on which the platform is located.

Development drilling on the Granite Point lease has been under way slightly more than a year. The first development well was brought in during May, 1967, at a rate of 2,200 barrels per day. With two rigs on the platform, drilling now is proceeding on the eighth and ninth wells.

Oil was discovered on the Granite Point lease in June 1965. The 5,000-acre lease is located 50 miles southwest of Anchorage, about three miles off the western shore of the Inlet. Mobil and Union paid the State of Alaska a bonus of $608,003 to acquire the lease in 1962.

Installation of the four-legged Granite Point platform was started in the Cook Inlet in July 1966, after its various parts and related equipment had been fabricated at several locations in the continental United States. Cost of the platform and dual eight-inch pipelines to shore was approximately $15 million.

At Granite Point shore facilities, oil from the platform is delivered to Cook Inlet pipeline for transporting 42 miles along the western shore of the Inlet to a marine terminal at Drift River. Mobil and four other companies share equal ownership in Cook Inlet Pipe Line Company. The 20-inch pipeline was completed in March 1967.

The first shipment of Mobil’s Alaska crude reached Los Angeles Harbor Aug. 8, 1967 after being barged across the Inlet to a tanker dock at Nikiski on the Kenai Peninsula. The 31,000-ton tanker, Mobioil, lifted the first cargo of crude oil from the newly completed Drift River Terminal on Nov. 5, and now is on a regularly scheduled run between the Cook Inlet and the Los Angeles area where Mobil has a 110,000-barrel-a-day refinery.

With more than a million barrels of storage at Drift River, the pipeline company will add additional storage to handle the increasing Cook Inlet production. Cook Inlet pipeline also serves five other Cook Inlet offshore platforms.