Nottingham named DO&G director
As of Feb. 1, Derek Nottingham, who has been serving as petroleum economist for the Alaska Department of Revenue, is the new director of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources' Division of Oil and Gas.
Nottingham received bachelor's and master's degrees focused in Petroleum Engineering from Louisiana State University.
Prior to working for DOR, he was employed by BP for 11-plus years, most recently from February 2015 to April 2020 as reservoir development area team lead for Prudhoe Bay.
In the position he led the Gathering Center 2 reservoir development team from 2018 to 2020 and the Flow Station 2 reservoir development team from 2015 to 2018. He was responsible for leading geoscientists, reservoir engineers, and petroleum engineers in continued flood management, drilling programs, and workover programs in those areas of the Prudhoe Bay field.
Prior to his time with BP, Nottingham worked for Chevron in Cook Inlet as a reservoir engineer.
He replaced Tom Stokes at the Division of Oil and Gas who resigned earlier this year.
- KAY CASHMAN
See story in Feb. 6 issue of Petroleum News, available online Feb. 3 at www.petroleumnews.com
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By the end of the third year, the company would have two wells completed in the unit area and have all of the acreage evaluated.
The U.S. Minerals Management Service told other affected state and federal agencies July 8 that BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. has withdrawn its development and production plan for its Beaufort Sea Liberty prospect. This action was preceded by a January announcement that BP was putting the project on hold, and a March 5 letter from MMS to agencies saying BP recommended that processing of permit applications be suspended.
On March 5, MMS said BP also indicated informally that submission of a modified development and production plan for Liberty could take six months or more.
Today, Dee Caldwell, an MMS official, told PNA that BP withdrew its development and production plan because “it is our understanding that scenario is dead and that BP is working on a more cost-effective development scenario.”
One such option, Dennis Hinnah, another MMS official, told PNA was to do processing onshore at Endicott or Badami.
In a June 6 letter to MMS, BP wrote that it is reevaluating the Liberty development plan and that “re-evaluation contains a number of different development scenarios,” ranging “from moving the proposed development island to the construction of a drilling island with a 3-phase flow back to existing infrastructure.”
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