The long unrealized Gubik gas line

Enstar-Anadarko stab at bringing foothills gas to Anchorage comes from long line of development ventures dating back 60 years

Eric Lidji

Petroleum News

If Enstar Natural Gas Co. and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. successfully build a bullet line from the foothills of the Brooks Range to Anchorage, it would prove up an old oil patch theory.

On and off again for more than 50 years, business leaders in Alaska have wondered whether markets along the Railbelt could justify developing the Gubik gas field.

“The most attractive and most promising opportunity from the view point of proven resources, risk involved, and foreseeable returns on investment would entail the production of natural gas from the Gubik structure and its transmission to the Alaskan Railbelt area by means of a pipe line approximately 465 miles in length from the Gubik gas field to the northern terminus of the Alaska Railroad,” engineer James W. Dalton wrote in a 1954 report for the Alaska Development Board.

Now Enstar has proposed building a $3.3 billion small-diameter pipeline from the Gubik field situated about 20 miles due east of the village of Umiat, through Fairbanks and down into Anchorage, most likely along the Parks Highway, around 660 miles altogether.

For Enstar, the bullet line would alleviate some of the worry surrounding declining gas supplies in the Cook Inlet. For Anadarko, which began an exploration program at Gubik this winter, the bullet line would guarantee a market for Gubik gas even if a larger natural gas pipeline to the Lower 48 never gets built.

An early exploration adventure

The U.S Navy and the U.S. Geological Survey drilled Gubik No. 1 and Gubik No. 2 in 1951 as part of a post-World War II exploration effort to find oil and gas across the Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4, now known as the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

Between 1945 and 1947, USGS scouting trips through the hills along the Anaktuvuk and Colville rivers and an aerial magnetic survey of the region provided the outline of the Gubik anticline, a thin structure about eight miles long and two miles wide.

The crews shot two lines during a seismic survey in 1950 and further delineated the structure during another seismic survey the following year, prompting the decision to drill two test wells about one mile apart.

Early in the year, a train of tractor-trailers brought about 2,000 tons of equipment to Gubik. The crew set up a camp for more than 25 people at Gubik and built an airstrip.

A drilling team found the National 50 rig stationed at the Fish Creek No. 1 well site, an older Navy well located about 75 miles to the north of the Gubik wells, along the northern border of what is now the Greater Mooses Tooth Unit.

On May 20, 1951, the USGS team commissioned by the Navy spud the Gubik No. 1 well along the western bank of the Chandler River at the top of the Gubik anticline. The well reached a total depth of 6,000 feet through “tight” rocks, and found “commercial quantities” of gas at a depth between 890 feet and 1,750 feet, according to a USGS report on the program.

The crew plugged and abandoned the Gubik No. 1 on Aug. 11.

During a stretch of late summer deemed “bad for moving,” the crew hauled the rig, the camp and the 2,000 tons of equipment more than a mile to the southeast, setting up the second well site in less than a month.

On Sept. 10, 1951, the crew spud Gubik No. 2 from a slightly lower spot on the anticline, finding both oil and gas. At a depth of 4,620 feet, the crew plugged the well in two places and prepared to re-enter with a smaller drill bit.

Just before the crew finished pulling the drill pipe from the well, mud and gas began flowing from the hole for about five minutes before igniting, sending flames more than four feet into the air. The fire destroyed the rig in a matter of minutes and continued burning for days.

The crew abandoned the well on Dec. 14, 1951.

Early attempts to develop failed

The USGS estimated the total reserves of the Gubik field at 600 billion cubic feet of gas, a figure still used today and one that Dalton considered sufficient for fueling the population center of Alaska in the years before statehood.

“The expansion of the natural gas market to take in the entire Railbelt area of Alaska, including Anchorage, the largest and fastest growing city in the Territory, is believed to be feasible,” Dalton wrote.

He envisioned a 10-inch, above-ground pipeline running into Fairbanks with four pump stations along the way at a total cost of $20 million, around $155 million when adjusted for 50 years of inflation.

In November 1957, the U.S. Department of the Interior began opening a large swath of Arctic Alaska to oil and gas development, including the area around the Gubik field.

Dalton and others formed the Alaska Propane Gas and Oil Co. Inc. as a vehicle for developing the field, making distribution agreements with the city of Fairbanks and spending more than $100,000 on engineering, according to a Fairbanks Daily News- Miner article at the time.

“Estimates are that the known gas reserves in this field would supply Fairbanks, Anchorage and the adjacent military bases for at least 30 years,” the article said.

Alaska Propane Gas and Oil increased the size of the project, imagining a 16-inch pipeline costing $46 million and a drilling program including four delineation wells and 12 production wells. The company also presented the possibility of extending the pipeline to the coalfields in Healy.

However, the project never got off the ground.

The federal government opened the area to bidding in 1958 and the land moved to state control following the Statehood Act.

Reporting on the early attempts to develop Gubik, the News-Miner recently published a quote from petroleum engineer John Rowlett, found in the paper’s archives.

“Whether Fairbanks gets gas from Gubik or Anchorage, it’s coming,” Rowlett said on March 1, 1960. “If it comes from Anchorage, we’re at the end of the line. If it comes from Gubik, we’ll be an industrial center. Nobody knows just when natural gas will come to Fairbanks — but it’s coming and the sooner it does, the more quickly Fairbanks will grow in industrial importance.”

In 1963, the Colorado Oil and Gas Co. drilled at Gubik, but the well turned out to be dry.

Anadarko picked up the acreage during a state lease sale in 2006 and announced plans for a gas exploration program last year.

By Enstar estimates, the bullet line would begin delivering gas to Anchorage as early as 2014.