The surge in North Slope exploration activity has produced another problem: convincing experienced rig workers who have left the state for the Bakken shale fields, or elsewhere, to quit their jobs and come back to Alaska for a mere 3-4 months.
Or training new workers but only being able to guarantee them a few months of work a year in one of the harshest environments in the world.
In most regions of the country exploration drilling is allowed year-round, using temporary gravel roads to reach road-less tracts of land.
But temporary gravel roads are rejected by state, federal and borough regulatory agencies in Alaska, which prefer winter ice roads and pads, thus limiting the annual exploration season to 3-4 months.
Jim Weeks, managing member of Alaska independent UltraStar Exploration and former ARCO Alaska executive, recently wrote a letter for an early November special meeting of the House Resource Committee, meeting to hear testimony on impediments to filling the Trans Alaska Pipeline System, or TAPS.
Weeks proposes a change to the current lease form by the Division of Oil and Gas that requires the use of ice roads and pads, saying allowing temporary year-round gravel roads could lower the cost of exploration — and speed up both exploration and development of new fields.
“As it now is, the successful bidder at a lease sale is awarded a contract to explore, develop and extract oil and gas from that lease,” Weeks wrote. “The contract stipulates that there will be no exploration on the lease except from approved ice roads and pads, built only when there is sufficient snow cover and frozen depth to carry the heavy loading of drilling rigs and equipment.
“This restricts the exploration drilling window to generally mid-January to no later than about April 15, depending upon the status of the well,” he said.
“So there is essentially a 90 day period in which to construct the ice road and pad and move in the rig and associated 50 truckloads of parts, plus camps, shops, generators, fuel storage tanks and other supporting facilities,” restricting the number of wells that can be drilled each year.
“Companies like Repsol, with nearly 400,000 acres to explore and delineate, will require multiple years to prove up commercial reserves and make plans for development. So it will need to re-build the needed ice roads and pads multiple times before development decisions are made. Linc Energy faces a similar challenge at Umiat,” Weeks said.
“The state should let private industry decide the most efficient and lowest cost manner to conduct exploration,” he said. “Ice roads and pads may be the best way forward for close in exploration. But for access to locations further from the road system, re-building ice roads every year for several years gets pretty expensive.”
If existing, or newly constructed permanent or semi-permanent gravel roads, airstrips and drilling pads would be more cost effective, they should be allowed, Weeks said.
Year-round access to leases being explored would shorten the time to production by years, he said.
“The ability to drill throughout the year will also significantly shave the winter peaking demand for drilling equipment, materials and manpower, thereby further reducing costs,” for the operators.
“An all-weather road to the location of the drilling also provides year round access for emergency response equipment and personnel, adding another level of safety to the already very high operating standards for humans and the environment,” Weeks said.
—Kay Cashman
