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February 2011

Vol. 16, No. 6 Week of February 06, 2011

BP moves Liberty startup out to 2013

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

BP has moved the startup date for its offshore North Slope Liberty project out to at least 2013.

Initial production had been pegged for 2012, and in its “Fall 2010 Revenue Sources Book,” published last November, the Alaska Department of Revenue listed Liberty production beginning at 5,000 barrels per day in fiscal year 2012 with production estimated to peak at 39,000 bpd in fiscal year 2013.

The 2013 startup date surfaced Feb. 1 in materials BP presented at its 2010 results and investor update.

Liberty was listed as a project for which the final investment decision has been made, but shown with a startup date of 2013 to 2016.

Steve Rinehart, BP’s Alaska spokesman, told Petroleum News in a Feb. 2 e-mail that the 2013 startup date “is a further step along the path we have been following.”

He said the last public schedule BP gave for Liberty had drilling beginning in late 2011, with oil production in 2012.

Rig work suspended in November

But in November, “we said we would suspend construction on the rig while we conduct a thorough engineering and design review, and that we would develop a new schedule as that review moved forward.”

“The project review is progressing, and our current estimate is oil production could begin in 2013,” Rinehart said.

Rinehart told Petroleum News in late November that BP was going to “suspend construction on the rig itself for a period of time,” described much of what would be done as “a thorough engineering review” and called it “a decision to move ahead deliberately.”

In July BP said drilling would delayed from late in 2011 to “likely” sometime in 2012, after statements by federal and state agencies that they would seek an environmental and safety review of Liberty following the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

The 100 million barrel Liberty field is in the Beaufort Sea, some 15 miles east of Prudhoe Bay. Drilling is planned from the Endicott satellite drilling island some eight miles west of Liberty, using ultra-extended reach wells.






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