|
More satellites to come on at Alpine West North Slope development discussed by both field partners ConocoPhillips and Anadarko at analyst meetings in early March Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
Alpine, the most westerly of North Slope development, got national play on successive days in March as Anadarko Petroleum and ConocoPhillips held annual analyst meetings. Both companies talked about the most recent satellite to produce through the Alpine facilities, Qannik, and about satellites scheduled to be added to the facility in coming years.
Chuck Meloy, Anadarko’s senior vice president, worldwide operations, cited Alpine as an example of Anadarko’s business model.
“The key to making money and delivering a great business here is building an economy of scale through anchor fields and then leveraging that infrastructure to your advantage to gather up the fields around,” Meloy said March 10.
There are a lot of examples of this, he said, but cited Alpine, noting that the company rarely talks about Alaska.
Anadarko is a partner in the ConocoPhillips Alaska-operated Alpine field, the anchor field in the Colville River unit adjacent to the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. ConocoPhillips has a 78 percent working interest in the Colville River unit; Anadarko has a 22 percent interest. Alpine came online in late 2000.
The field has been a success, Meloy said, “and in the last two or three years and for the next two or three years we’ve essentially been adding one satellite a year into the central processing facility to keep the production flat or near flat on a plateau,” he said, calling it “a business model that adds a lot of value to Anadarko.”
Qannik last year Ryan Lance, ConocoPhillips’ president of exploration and production for Europe, Africa and the Middle East, said at the March 11 ConocoPhillips’ analyst meeting that startups in 2008 included the Qannik satellite at Alpine; startups planned for 2010-13 include Alpine West; and 2014-plus startups include Lookout and Fiord West.
That would bring the total of satellites producing into Alpine to six: Nanuq, south of the main field, started producing in 2006, along with Fiord, north of the main field. Qannik produces from an extension of the Colville Delta 2 drill site west of the main Alpine processing facilities.
Alpine West, which would be the first development within NPR-A, is just west of the Alpine field. In November of last year ConocoPhillips Alaska President Jim Bowles said the company is still working to permit development of the CD-5 pad, also known as Alpine West, a satellite which would allow the company to bridge some of the gap between Greater Mooses Tooth in NPR-A and existing Alpine processing facilities.
Lookout is a discovery in NPR-A in the Mooses Tooth unit approved by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in early 2008. Last year ConocoPhillips said it hoped to have production from Mooses Tooth perhaps as early as 2012 or 2013 — that clearly now has slipped to at least 2014. Lookout would be produced from a proposed CD-6 drill site.
ConocoPhillips discussed a Fiord West satellite in a fall 2008 update to its Colville River unit development plan.
The company said then that beyond 2011 it “intends to develop additional sands in the southern Nechelik reservoir and also both the Kuparuk and the Nechelik sands in the Fiord West satellite area, located southwest of the current Fiord development.” ConocoPhillips said these longer-term plans “are contingent on obtaining viable permits to cross the Nigliq channel” of the Colville River.
Into the Chukchi Larry Archibald, ConocoPhillips’ vice president, exploration, said at the March 11 analysts’ meeting that the Chukchi is “another giant province” and noted that Conoco and Shell spent “much more than the industry” in acquiring acreage there last year for a reason: “We had differential data,” including “new seismic that allowed us to see some of these giant structures that were known about” and well control data from wells drilled a couple of decades ago.
ConocoPhillips had $506.4 million in high bids for 98 tracts at the February 2008 Minerals Management Service Chukchi Sea outer continental shelf lease sale; Shell had $2.1 billion in high bids for 275 tracts.
ConocoPhillips “picked up virtually all of what we call the Devil’s Paw structure and a significant amount of the Burger structure and some of the other satellites around there,” Archibald said.
He said ConocoPhillips is “tentatively planning work that includes drilling an operated-well in the Devil’s Paw as early as 2011.” He said Shell has targeted drilling the Burger prospect in 2010-11.
The value of the Chukchi depends on how much gas is there, oil vs. gas, Archibald said, telling an analyst that Conoco’s bids were based on “some unique differential knowledge of the hydrocarbon systems up there.”
While ConocoPhillips is “pretty confident” in its view of the prospect — i.e., that its acreage is oil- rather than gas-prone — Archibald acknowledged that there has been very little exploration in the Chukchi, so it is much more of a frontier basin than the Beaufort.
| 