Statoil opening Alaska office, plans Chukchi seismic shoot

Statoil USA E&P is looking for office space in Anchorage to house the company’s first Alaska-based employee, Karin Berentsen.

Berentsen, who will be moving to the state from Norway in January, is working on “stakeholder dialogue” about Statoil’s tentative exploration plans for its Chukchi Sea leases offshore Alaska, company spokeswoman Kjersti Torgersen told Petroleum News Nov. 19.

Former Alaska Division of Oil and Gas Director Ken Boyd will continue to be Statoil’s consultant in Alaska, Torgersen said.

The company is preparing to file permits to conduct a 2010 seismic program over its Chukchi leases, utilizing the technical expertise of ASRC Energy Services and LGL to help with permitting.

Torgersen, Boyd and other Statoil officials have been meeting with North Slope civic leaders and federal agencies, a process that will be expanded after Berentsen moves to Alaska.

A Petroleum News source at one of the agencies said Statoil is looking at drilling in the open water season of 2011 or 2012.

According to the North Slope Borough mayor’s office, Statoil has already taken borough Mayor Edward Itta and key borough staff members for a tour of its offshore Norway oil and gas facilities — a trip that included meetings with fishing groups and government agencies, entities that occasionally clash with the oil and gas industry. The meetings included discussions about how such disputes are resolved in Norway.

Will conduct 3-D seismic in 2010

The Dutch marine seismic data acquisition firm is part of the Amsterdam-based Fugro Group.

The three-month 3-D survey, 100 miles offshore Alaska’s North Slope, will take place during the open water season, “from approximately early August into October,” Fugro said in a Nov. 17 press release.

“The purpose of the seismic shoot is to get a better understanding of our leases,” Torgersen said.

Due to the “challenging conditions” in the Chukchi and the “limited acquisition window,” Fugro said it is using “one of the world’s newest and most technologically advanced, ‘C-class’ vessels” for the seismic acquisition, noting Fugro’s “large and modern C-Class vessels have a DNV ICE classification as well as the proven capability to tow an exceptionally high streamer count.”

Picked up leases in 2008

The 16 leases sit about 37 miles north of the Burger gas prospect.

Statoil partnered on 14 of its 16 high bids with ENI Petroleum USA, the U.S. subsidiary of Italian major Eni S.p.A. that is currently developing the Beaufort Sea Nikaitchuq prospect offshore Alaska.

Under the agreement with Eni, Statoil is lease operator and holds a 60 percent interest in the shared Chukchi acreage. Statoil has a 100 percent interest in the other two leases.

“StatoilHydro sees this as an opportunity to achieve a competitive position in a new frontier basin with long-term growth potential, while also advancing the Arctic initiative,” Halvore Engebretsen, vice president for Statoil’s Arctic growth theme, told Petroleum News in an e-mail on Feb. 7, 2008, from his office in Norway.

Engebretsen said that Eni and Statoil make “a strong team.”

Although he would not comment on “internal evaluations” used to justify the bids, Engebretsen did call the Chukchi Sea “an Arctic area with already proven hydrocarbons, in an open transparent bid round in a politically and fiscally stable regime.”

Statoil USA is a subsidiary of Statoil ASA, a largely state-owned Norwegian oil and gas major, which produced 1.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent in 2008, operates in more than 40 countries, is a major player in offshore Norway and Newfoundland, and is gearing up for what Statoil’s Russian subsidiary president describes as the “mother of all projects” — developing the Shtokman gas field in the Russian part of the Barents Sea.

—Kay Cashman