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BLM starts work on Atigaru Point well Cleanup efforts begin on third in program to prevent environmental damage at ‘legacy wells’; funding uncertain for fourth well Eric Lidji Petroleum News
The federal government is tackling another decades-old well site that poses a threat to the environment because of eroding coastlines and thawing permafrost on the North Slope.
The Bureau of Land Management in late February began remediation work on the Atigaru Point No. 1 well site, situated some 30 miles northwest of Nuiqsut at the tip of a peninsula in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska that juts into Harrison Bay.
Atigaru is the third effort in a BLM program to prevent “legacy wells” across NPR-A from damaging the environment. Like Atigaru, the previous wells also sat near coastlines.
Receding coastlines threaten to dump the contents of these well sites, which contain diesel fuel and drilling mud, into nearby lakes, oceans or bays on the North Slope.
This changing landscape put Atigaru in a precarious situation.
Naval crews considering drilling locations in Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4 in the late 1970s, the final years before the area became known as NPR-A, ultimately sited an exploration well as far out on the tip of Atigaru Point as possible, hoping to reach a geologic formation encountered by a well to the west and the Prudhoe Bay field farther to the east.
The U.S. Navy eventually drilled Atigaru in 1977 to a total depth of 11,535 feet.
Today, the eroding coastline in the Atigaru area has turned the well site from a peninsula to an island, and a “major summer storm” could potentially cause “low-lying areas” to crumble, dumping drilling mud and diesel fuel into the water, according to BLM.
The cleanup effort began Feb. 27 and is slated to run through mid-April.
BLM expects the project to cost about $15 million, with funds redirected from within the agency last fall in an emergency request outside the normal funding cycle.
The work involves excavating oil-based drilling mud, which is also believed to contain heavy metals, from the reserve pit at Atigaru Point and trucking it to the North Kalikpik No. 1 well site about 15 miles to the southwest. Crews will also drain some 14,000 gallons of diesel fuel currently stored inside the Atigaru well bore to prevent freezing.
BLM hired Marsh Creek LLC to carry out the work.
Nearing end of project BLM, an arm of the U.S. Department of the Interior, has been managing NPR-A legacy wells for decades, but only began focusing on emergency cases over the past few years.
The recent push began in adventurous fashion in 2005, when BLM crews set out to remediate the J.W. Dalton No. 1 well north of Teshekpuk Lake. The U.S. Geological Survey drilled the well 1,500 feet from the Beaufort Sea coastline in 1979. In September 2004 crews discovered the coastline had eroded all the way back to the well and rushed to clean up the site before waves crashed over the area.
Following work at J.W. Dalton, BLM began prioritizing other legacy wells by the likelihood each might become an environmental hazard through the end of the decade.
The program continued last winter with the East Teshekpuk No. 1 well, located along the eastern edge of Teshekpuk Lake. Marsh Creek also cleaned up the East Teshekpuk well.
After finishing Atigaru Point this year, BLM hopes to address the Drew Point No. 1 well, northwest of Teshekpuk Lake, but funding for the project remains uncertain.
BLM received $320 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the stimulus bill, but the money hasn’t been appropriated for specific projects, according to Wayne Svejnoha, environmental program manager for BLM in Alaska.
Drew Point is the last of the legacy well sites believed to be an immediate threat to the environment because of coastal erosion. After Drew Point, BLM does not anticipate having to address another legacy well for at least a decade, Svejnoha said, although several well sites further inland could require remediation sometime in the future.
Possible candidates include the Tulageak and West Dease wells, east of Barrow.
In excursions between 1944 and 1953, and between 1975 and 1982, the U.S. Navy and the USGS drilled 136 wells in what is now the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
BLM believes 41 of these wells could “pose a potential risk to the environment” and has cleaned up 13 since 2002. The agency hopes to tackle 13 over the next five or six years.
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