“We’re probably not going to have a program this winter,” Hanley said. “… We completed three wells last season. We’re trying to evaluate those.”

Earlier this year the company, with its partners Petro-Canada and BG, completed two years of foothills exploration drilling on a group of natural gas leases around Umiat, in a region that the company calls the Gubik Complex. Hanley said that Anadarko had planned to conduct a test in its Chandler well this winter, but that launching a winter exploration program just to test one well was not cost effective. Instead, the company hopes to conduct the test, along with the drilling of two more wells, during the winter of 2010-11.

“What we’d like to do is drill a couple of wells and do the test in the same season, so we can share the ice roads and a lot of the infrastructure stuff,” Hanley said.

And the deferral of the well test should not have much impact on the time frame for Anadarko’s overall foothills multiyear, multiwell exploration program, he said.

In August Suncor Energy took over Petro-Canada, but Suncor has not yet stated its intentions with regard to Alaska exploration, although the company is still a partner in the foothills exploration program.

See story in Nov. 22 issue, available online at noon, Friday Nov. 20 at www.PetroleumNews.com