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Vol. 18, No. 51 Week of December 22, 2013
Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
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New technology for CD-5

ConocoPhillips innovating for installation of Nigliq Channel crossing

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

Respecting the environmentally sensitive area where it is working at its Colville River unit on the west side of the North Slope is a priority for ConocoPhillips Alaska, Nick Olds, the company’s vice president for North Slope operations and development, told the Alaska Support Industry Alliance Dec. 12.

That includes both how facilities are designed and how they are installed.

Olds said ConocoPhillips is in “both cooperation and collaboration with the Kuukpik Corp. out there as well as the Arctic Slope Regional Corp.,” as one of the unique features of the Colville River unit is Native ownership.

All development is through extended reach drilling with horizontal wells, allowing for the very small footprint, a total of some 163 acres for all Alpine facilities, camps, roads and the airstrip, he said.

The single train at Alpine is also different than normal oil field development, where it’s typical to “have double redundancy — you might have two primary separators and backup equipment, but in this case we have a single train that’s processing all our oil … and it’s highly automated.” To get the economics with a single train, he said, high uptime is required.

Colville River delta

Environmental sensitivity is necessary, Olds said, because the Colville River delta is the second largest delta in the United States, with abundant wildlife and subsistence hunting from Nuiqsut, the village eight miles to the south of the Alpine central facilities.

With no year-round access to Alpine, ice roads are required in winter to resupply the facility with drilling and maintenance materials. Olds said it’s a logistics challenge that has to be overcome every year.

Development phasing

ConocoPhillips is working a phased development plan at its western prospects, he said, reviewing the Alpine discovery in 1994, sanctioning in 1996 and production in late 2000 at the CD-1 central facility. Satellite developments at CD-3 and CD-4 started up in 2006, and Alpine production peaked in 2007 at 139,000 barrels per day, Olds said, with current production at some 60,000 bpd.

CD-5 is projected to come online in late 2015 — construction on that pad and access is beginning this winter.

Olds said the company’s strategy is “level-loaded sequential development as we go out into NPR-A,” the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

Next in the plan is GMT-1 at the Greater Mooses Tooth unit in NPR-A, with production projected to begin in 2017.

The benefits of doing developments sequentially include “efficient use of our limited company resources as well as agency resources with permitting, reduced impact on the environment and local residents, as well as … leveraging of the use of our existing Alpine infrastructure” at the Alpine central facility, Olds said.

CD-5 work

Development of CD-5 includes a 6-mile gravel road, off the main gravel road from CD-1 to CD-4, an 11.7-acre gravel pad, the Nigliq Channel bridge — a 1,405-foot span — and three smaller, 300-400 foot span bridges.

Olds said pipeline, power and communications for CD-5 will be run out of the central facility at Alpine, “so we don’t need to have the redundant facilities located at the pad.”

Ice roads for the project will be built through January, with bridge construction January through April.

Olds said the plan is to complete the three smaller bridges this winter, as well as installing pilings and piling caps for the main bridge across the Nigliq Channel.

Bridge deployment

The deployment technique for the Nigliq bridge is innovative, Olds said. Instead of the “traditional pick and set” with cranes used to pick up the girders and set them on the piers, “because of the environmentally sensitive area, we’re going to be using a launching technique and we’re going to be launching the girders across pier group to pier group for that 1,405-foot span,” he said.

Instead of using cranes on the river, a track and trolley system will be used. The beams will be assembled and then launched from the abutment to the pier group, with the longest span that will need to be crossed about 220 feet. A hydraulic ram system will be used and the girders will be pushed across in roughly 4-5 foot increments, he said.

Once the whole span has been crossed the rolling system will be removed, the final deck panels and guardrails will be put in place, and the rig will be moved across for drilling to begin in 2015, Olds said.

The work of moving the beams into place will begin in October

Greater Mooses Tooth 1

Greater Mooses Tooth 1, GMT-1, will follow CD-5.

That project includes a gravel road from CD-5 and two bridges, Olds, said, calling GMT-1 a replica of CD-5, with the oil also to be processed back at the Central Alpine Facilities and the development also making use of water injection facilities, power facilities and communication facilities at Alpine.

Olds said GMT-1, like CD-5, is also “a road-assisted development, and that is driven by the fact that we need to respond in case there was ever a safety instance or an emergency instance, that would impact people and the environment,” allowing the company to respond in a timely fashion with resources from the Alpine central facilities.

A permitting package for GMT-1 was submitted in July, he said, and a supplemental environmental impact statement is being developed which should be out for public comment in January. Olds said the plan is to have GMT-1 permitted by summertime and then the project would go for sanction.

Peak production from CD-5 is projected at 16,000 bpd and peak production from GMT-1 30,000 bpd.

Work since SB 21

Other developments since passage of Senate Bill 21, the oil tax reform, include the addition of Nabors 7ES rig at Kuparuk in late May; work on Kuparuk River drill site 2S, where gravel will be laid in February; and an additional rig, Nabors 9ES, for grassroots drilling at Kuparuk projected for January.

Two exploration wells are planned for this winter, he said, wells designed to identify other opportunities in NPR-A: The Lookout prospect near GMT-1 — if a commercial discovery is made — could be developed from GMT-1 with current drilling technology. A second exploration well, in the GMT2 area, is designed to aid with “further appraisal for that asset to determine the commerciality.”

Olds said that at CD-2 ConocoPhillips has drilled wells out in measured depth to 25,000 feet, with the average of the longest wells around 23,000 feet.

He said the company continues to look at whether longer wells can be drilled —wells that could reach 30,000 feet for example — and is looking at various drilling techniques to achieve that.



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