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Barron: State, industry can work together New Division of Oil and Gas director comes from long career with industry, says state can be protected while resources developed By Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
Bill Barron, the newly named director of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Oil and Gas, brings 35 years of industry experience and a love of Alaska to the job.
Barron told Petroleum News in a June 21 interview that he first came to Alaska with Marathon in 1982 as a reservoir engineer. He worked Marathon’s properties in Cook Inlet until 1990-91, doing reservoir engineering and planning and development for the Grayling gas sands, culminating in the Steelhead platform.
He was production foreman on the Steelhead platform and had just moved over to the Dolly Varden platform as production foreman when the Steelhead blew out. He then spent time on the vessels working the fire.
Barron spent three years in Wyoming in a facility process group and then went to Houston where he worked on international projects for Marathon.
In 1997 he came back to Cook Inlet as Marathon’s operations manager, reporting to the business manager. Barron was responsible for all field activities, drilling, production, etc., for Marathon-operated properties.
Barron left Marathon in 2004 and joined VECO, now CH2M Hill, initially as program manager for ConocoPhillips capital engineering projects and then moving on to head the operations and maintenance group, including assignments in Canada and the Lower 48.
Great 35 years Barron said his career offered a great opportunity to move around and see and learn.
But what brought him to this job?
A combination of background and a love of both state and industry, an industry he has seen from both the producer and contractor side.
“It’s been a great 35 years and that’s part of the deal — I’m absolutely passionate about this state and I’m absolutely passionate about this industry because I can see that both of them can work so well together if we just want to.”
How does he see working through differences between state and industry?
“Every organization has their set of stakeholders, shareholders and priorities,” he said.
Industry, producers and contractors, and the state — legislators, administration, staff — all have issues that need to be addressed, he said, and figuring out “ways of communicating and understanding those issues is something we have to do,” Barron said, because “it’s all intertwined.”
“And we all have a piece of not only the problem but more important, we all have a piece of the solution. We just need to figure that out. How do we get all the right pieces together?
“And responsible development is very, very doable.”
The state needs to be protected; the environment needs to be protected, he said.
“At the same time, you want to do everything you can to accelerate, reasonably and responsibly, the development of the natural resources.”
Future for the division Barron noted that the Cook Inlet oil and gas lease sale (see story on page 1 of this issue) has different terms for leases formerly part of the Cosmopolitan unit and said he thinks that’s “a piece that you’re going to see in the future in this group.”
He’s been meeting with the division, section by section at section staff meetings, and said he’s impressed by the education, diversity, insight and passion of division staff, and has confidence that “we can think creatively; we can sit down and understand the concerns of all the stakeholders; and we can come up with solutions.”
The drive in the division’s sections is to come up with solutions, Barron said, and the different lease terms for tracts that were formerly part of Cosmopolitan is a demonstration of that.
“Things are being looked at differently, creatively, progressively and in my mind very positively,” he said.
The division is looking at changes in lease terms for the North Slope, Beaufort Sea and Foothills sales in the fall, and Barron said he’s “asked the team to look at the terms in general, with the eye of do our lease terms encourage exploration and development?” Leasing is fine, he said, but the state doesn’t truly benefit until there is production.
That doesn’t mean there will be shortcuts from the environmental or safety perspectives, Barron said, “but there are ways to encourage people to secure the lease and do work on the lease. And if they’re interested in doing work, great; if they’re not, then return the lease so somebody else will.”
Strategic planning model As part of a department-wide evaluation of regulations, the division is looking at how existing statutes and regulations affect the work it does, section by section, and how other stakeholders are affected, including industry, the environmental community and Native stakeholders.
This is long term; as the division comes up with ideas those are discussed with other sections within the division, Barron said, and other divisions within the department.
One issue is what information a section gets from other sections, and what information it gives to other sections.
“We’re trying to work our way through a complete strategic planning model for DOG and integrated process mapping within the DOG, so that we understand how something from leasing or units impacts accounting and auditing; how something in resource evaluation affects the commercial team vs. the accounting team vs. units team.
“It’s all got to be inter-tied,” he said.
Units go-by document Several sections in the division are currently working on something that is a clear and explicit explanation of the series of events that required for unit formation.
Barron said the goal is “pretty much a go-by document” for units, so that everybody understands the hurdles and thresholds for unit formation, based on the fact that there need to be “technical reasons for the development of a unit … based on geology, based on technical data, based on previous work plans.”
It will take time to develop and vet a document for unit formation, Barron said, and the division would probably take it out to industry and other stakeholders for input, including legislators, “because their constituents come to them and say I’m trying to get a unit.”
Every unit proposal will continue to be evaluated on its merits.
“But what we need to make sure of it that everybody understands what those hurdles are,” Barron said, the thresholds that have to be accomplished or the data available “to prove the reason to move forward.”
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