Phase 2 of Alpine capacity expansion approved

Production at ConocoPhillips Alaska-operated western North Slope field will go from 100,000 to 140,000 barrels per day

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief

ConocoPhillips and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. said March 3 that they will increase oil production capacity at the Alpine field on Alaska’s North Slope to 140,000 barrels of oil per day (gross). The field, which started production in November 2000, currently is producing some 100,000 bpd.

The companies said phase 2 of the Alpine capacity expansion project, or ‘ACX2’, will be completed by mid-2005.

This expansion will increase both the oil handling and seawater injection capacities at Alpine.

The project is expected to cost $58 million (gross) and follows the previously announced ‘ACX1’ project, which will start up later this year. The companies said more than 300 Alaskans are employed across the state on the construction and fabrication phase of the two projects. ACX1, approved in May 2003, increases production capacity from 100,000 bpd to 105,000 bpd.

“Many of the modules are already under construction and the first truckable modules will be arriving on the slope this winter,” ConocoPhillips Alaska spokeswoman Dawn Patience told Petroleum News March 3. Both projects increase production from the Alpine field, and do not address potential additional production from Alpine satellites, she said.

There are eight truckable modules in the two projects, Patience said, with the majority going to the slope this winter.

The two expansion projects will increase oil production and maintain reservoir pressure. Eighty-one wells, 39 production wells and 42 injection wells, have been drilled to date, the companies said, with 94 wells in total planned for the two Alpine drill sites. Alpine has been developed exclusively with horizontal well technology and employs enhanced oil recovery.

“The field’s unique design and use of EOR will help extract more oil from the reservoir,” the companies said in a statement.

The 40,000-acre Alpine field was developed on just 97 acres, the companies said, two-tenths of 1 percent of the surface area. The field is a “near-zero discharge facility,” with waste generated at the field “reused, recycled or properly disposed.”

There is no permanent road to Alpine. Ice roads are constructed in the winter for the transportation of equipment and drilling supplies. Small aircraft also provide service to the field.

ACX1 and ACX2 contractors include: NANA/Colt Engineering LLC, VECO Alaska Inc., ASRC Energy Services, Nanuq Inc., Steelfab, Flowline, The Weld Shop and Parsons Energy and Chemical.

ConocoPhillips Alaska operates the Alpine field, owned 78 percent by ConocoPhillips and 22 percent by Anadarko Petroleum. Alpine was declared commercial in 1996, and is the largest onshore oil field discovered in the United States in more than a decade, the companies said. It is the western-most producing oil field on Alaska’s North Slope, some 34 miles west of the Kuparuk River field in the Colville River area near the border of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.