Two wildcat wells to be drilled by partners ConocoPhillips, Anadarko Petroleum and Pioneer Natural Resources this winter in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska will be searching for reserves large enough to justify a stand-alone production facility in the area.
Robert Daniels, Anadarko’s senior vice president of exploration and production, said in a Jan. 28 conference call with analysts that the planned wildcats, to be drilled by operator ConocoPhillips on the Kokoda prospect, will be situated in a remote area of the NPR-A and “a significant distance” west of the ConocoPhillips-operated Alpine production facility.
“What we’re looking for there is a discovery large enough to support another stand-alone facility,” Daniels said. “So we’re moving far enough away that these won’t be satellites, most likely, into the Alpine.”
The partners are currently building a 70-mile ice road leading to the Kokoda prospect, said to be farther out than anyone has ventured with an ice road before.
ConocoPhillips’ Puviaq prospect, the western most well drilled in recent years in NPR-A, is west of Teshekpuk Lake. Kokoda is about halfway back to the edge of NPR-A from Puviaq and southwest of BP’s Trailblazer wells, which are now owned by ConocoPhillips (78 percent) and partner Anadarko Petroleum (22 percent).
At Puviaq, ConocoPhillips moved equipment by rolligon from both Deadhorse and Barrow, driving “over 26,000 miles in rolligons at 10 miles an hour,” Rick Mott, ConocoPhillips Alaska’s vice president of exploration and land, told Petroleum News last year.
Total drilled its Caribou prospect south of Kokoda last winter but did not build an ice road, using rolligons and an existing gravel air strip near the site. The Trailblazer prospect, reached by ice road in 2001, is somewhat closer to the North Slope road system.
Target: Jurassic
Daniels said the partners are specifically targeting the Jurassic, a huge geological formation that sweeps from the Colville Delta west into the NPR-A.
Alaska Division of Oil and Gas Director Mark Myers told Petroleum News in a 2004 interview that three Jurassic sandstones extend north of Kuparuk and all the way to the Alpine field and into NPR-A: “There are a series of three upper Jurassic-aged sandstones that are known to contain oil … staggering amounts of oil,” the Alpine, the Nuiqsut and the Nechelik.
The Alpine sandstone that forms the reservoir for the prolific Alpine field is the youngest of three major upper Jurassic sandstone rock bodies on the North Slope.
The challenge, Myers said, is hitting the right combination of oil quality and reservoir characteristics to find an oil accumulation that’s commercially viable.
Daniels characterized prospects in the Kokoda area as “very interesting … similar to what we’re pursuing and have had success with up there, both at Alpine and the satellite discoveries we have to date.”
Pioneer a Kokoda partner
In December Dallas-based independent Pioneer Natural Resources, an increasingly aggressive player on Alaska’s North Slope, expanded its position in the NPR-A through an exploration agreement with partners ConocoPhillips and Anadarko, long-time partners on the North Slope. The deal included a 20 percent stake in the Kokoda prospect.
“The thinking (here) was that we were able to bring a partner in to share some of our risk, pick up some of our cost and just basically to make the whole project more economic from our standpoint,” Daniels said. “We thought it was a good alignment to bring them in.”
The recent exploration agreement with ConocoPhillips and Anadarko specifically gives Pioneer a 20 percent interest in roughly 452,000 additional acres and the rights to extensive seismic and geologic data in the NPR-A Northeast Planning Area.
“This new joint venture agreement positions us to participate in near-term, high-impact exploration opportunities on trend with existing discoveries,” said Scott Sheffield, Pioneer’s chief executive officer.
Earlier in 2004, through an exploration agreement with ConocoPhillips and Anadarko, Pioneer acquired a 20 percent interest in 167,000 acres in the NPR-A northeast planning area and in the adjacent federal offshore waters. Pioneer also participated in the NPR-A northwest planning area lease sale and acquired working interests ranging from 20 percent to 30 percent in about 808,000 acres.
