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40 Years at Prudhoe Bay: Field fuels nation Importance of Prudhoe Bay to U.S. oil production cannot be overestimated; field will support future heavy oil, natural gas output Nancy Pounds For Petroleum News
Prudhoe Bay production has been a powerful force for the United States. The field’s oil has long been a strong contributor to total U.S. oil production. And energy experts predict Prudhoe Bay and its North Slope counterparts will continue producing into the future.
Historically, the Prudhoe Bay discovery was important to America amid the world oil crisis of the 1970s.
“It had a profound effect on the American government, on how they dealt with the crisis,” recalled Roger Herrera, a former BP geologist and company executive. He now works as a consultant for Arctic Power.
Prudhoe Bay, at the time, had an estimated 9.6 billion barrels of recoverable oil. This fact helped the nation deal with oil crises imposed by Middle Eastern oil producers, he said. The first oil crisis was in 1973, followed by another one in 1979, Herrera noted. Prudhoe Bay oil began production in 1977.
“Prudhoe was hugely important in those days,” Herrera said.
“I think what everyone has to remember is that before 1973, small-scale production in the U.S. was the status quo,” he said.
Oil prices climbed in the 1970s, and America’s oil production peaked and declined, he added. “The discovery of Prudhoe Bay was a godsend to the American government.”
One-fourth of U.S. oil at peak At its peak of production in 1988, Prudhoe Bay and the North Slope accounted for 25 percent of total U.S. oil production, according to a Department of Energy August 2007 report.
Brent Sheets, regional manager for the Energy Department’s National Energy Technology Laboratory Arctic Energy Office in Fairbanks, co-authored: “Alaska North Slope Oil and Gas: A promising future or an area in decline?”
Prudhoe Bay is significant in size as the largest oil accumulation in North America and as a catalyst for “the grassroots development of a petroleum infrastructure on Alaska’s remote North Slope,” Sheets said.
Development of Prudhoe Bay required construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, production facilities, crew quarters and other facilities, the Energy Department report noted. This infrastructure allowed for additional development on the North Slope.
Those oil efforts are important for the nation today.
“The total Alaska North Slope — not just Prudhoe Bay — still produces about 15 percent of the U.S. domestic oil production almost 30 years after startup of production in 1977,” Sheets said.
Advanced technology and reduced costs have allowed “this major oil production province to sustain a major role in the nation’s energy supplies,” Sheets said.
Prudhoe Bay’s upcoming role “Prudhoe Bay may have been discovered 40 years ago, but from an exploration perspective, the North Slope is not a mature petroleum province,” Sheets said.
The region holds more room for exploratory wells, he said.
“Alaska’s fossil energy resources will likely play a greater role in meeting the nation’s energy needs in the future,” Sheets said. “Alaska holds about one-fifth of America’s remaining proved oil reserves, a significant portion of its natural gas reserves and over half of its coal resources. When North Slope unconventional resources such as viscous oil and methane hydrates are factored in, the potential is incredible.”
Phil Budzik, of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, echoes Sheets’ assessment of Prudhoe Bay’s significance for the nation. Budzik works in the Oil and Gas Division’s Office of Integrated Analysis and Forecasting.
“The discovery of Prudhoe Bay opened the entire North Slope of Alaska to oil and gas development by providing a pool of oil and natural gas large enough to justify the building of a trans-Alaska oil pipeline and eventually a natural gas pipeline,” Budzik said.
Prudhoe Bay is responsible for all the oil development on the North Slope, which amounts to 15.4 billion barrels produced through 2006, and another 6 billion barrels that are currently expected to be produced, not including new discoveries, to total 21.4 billion barrels, Budzik said.
“All these Alaska North Slope developments, both past and future, pivoted on the development of Prudhoe Bay,” he said. “In other words, without Prudhoe Bay, North Slope oil and gas … production wouldn’t have taken place.”
Budzik estimates Prudhoe Bay natural gas resources at 23 trillion cubic feet — one year’s worth of total U.S. gas consumption.
“Prudhoe Bay natural gas resources will be the anchor field for the development of a 4.5-billion-cubic-feet-per-day pipeline to the Lower 48,” Budzik said. “Development of Prudhoe Bay as an oil field paved the way for the development of a gas pipeline.”
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