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Voters OK bonding for Barrow wells Additional $35M in funding will enable gas field drilling program to proceed to maintain future gas supplies for Arctic city Alan Bailey Petroleum News
With the voters in Alaska’s North Slope Borough having on Feb. 1 approved a $35 billion bond to help fund upgrades to the Barrow gas fields, it’s all systems go for a program to drill six new wells in the fields.
The borough has already sold bonds for the project in the past two years and this new bond will complete the funding for the project’s estimated $92 million cost, Randy Hoffbeck, North Slope Borough director of administration and finance, told Petroleum News Feb. 16.
The Barrow gas fields, consisting of the East Barrow field, the South Barrow field and the Walakpa field, supply natural gas for heating and power generation to the city of Barrow at the extreme western end of the North Slope.
Gas since 1949 The South Barrow field originally came online in 1949, following discovery of the gas fields by the U.S. Navy during a search for oil in what was then Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4, later to be renamed the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The East Barrow field went into production in the 1980s, with the Walakpa field, to the south of Barrow, following suit in 1993.
Although the fields have been in use for several decades, the borough has conservatively estimated a further 100-year supply of gas to local communities from the fields, said Matthew Dunn, North Slope Borough director for the capital improvements program. The idea of the drilling program is to ensure continuity of future gas supplies, he said.
“We are hoping this will bring us into that 25- to 30-year projection for meeting the gas demands for the community,” Dunn said.
The plan is to drill two new wells in the East Barrow field and four wells in the Walakpa field, and to tie those wells into the existing gas infrastructure. Drilling at East Barrow will involve the use of existing gravel well pads, while the Walakpa drilling will require the construction of an ice road, as well as building ice pads for the drilling sites.
The borough also plans to plug and abandon eight old wells in the gas fields.
“While we have the rig here we want to keep it busy,” Dunn said.
Some of the old wells have become a safety concern, he said.
Pipeline upgrade The project will also include an upgrade to the East Barrow gas pipeline, increasing the operating pressure in that line from its existing 300-pounds-per-square-inch level.
“We’re going to do some upgrade work to that line so that it will carry a higher pressure flow and introduce some redundancy for some of the other fields,” Dunn said.
In particular, the pipeline upgrade will enable continuity of summer gas supplies from just the East Barrow field during a Walakpa field shutdown for long-term maintenance, he said.
The pipeline upgrade will involve the fitting of some new valves to the existing line, followed by pressure testing of the line.
Design work and logistics planning for the gas-fields project is nearly complete, with contractors chosen and several contracts established, Dunn said. Much of the pre-engineering and startup activities have been completed, and vendors are procuring items that need to be ordered well in advance.
Equipment sealift The borough has contracted the use of the Kuukpik No. 5 drilling rig. The rig is currently located in the Cook Inlet area and in July will be shipped to the North Slope by barge from Nikiski on the Kenai Peninsula, Hoffbeck said. Shipping all of the required equipments and materials to Barrow will involve several barges.
Drilling in the gas fields will probably start in September, with the two East Barrow gas field wells to be drilled during the fall. That initial drilling will be followed by plug and abandonment work in the East and South Barrow fields in the late fall and early winter. Drilling in the Walakpa field will take place in early 2012, finishing in April 2012, in time to return the drilling equipment to Barrow for barging south in July 2012. Completion of the pipeline work involved in connecting up the new wells will likely continue into 2013, Dunn said.
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