NPR-A, Foothills on par with Prudhoe, Kuparuk, Anadarko says
Anadarko Petroleum Corp., based on United States Geological Survey estimates of 17 billion barrels of oil and 60 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, believes the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and Foothills regions of the North Slope hold reserve potential equal to the Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk fields.
“We did some of our own number crunching and we are very comfortable with the USGS numbers,” said Diane Kerr, Anadarko's frontier exploration manager for Alaska and Canada.
USGS has put the oil resource potential in the Jurassic formation at 7 billion barrels and in the Brookian at 10 billion barrels, compared to an initial 13 billion barrels of recoverable oil at Prudhoe Bay and 3 billion barrels at Kuparuk.
Additionally, the natural gas potential in the southern portion of the NPR-A and Foothills combined was placed at 60 trillion cubic feet, compared to roughly 25 trillion cubic feet of proven reserves in Prudhoe.
“We believe as much in the NPR-A area as we do in the Prudhoe Bay-Kuparuk area,” Kerr said. “We are looking at the oil potential in the near term and gas potential in the long term.”
Anadarko sets reserve goal of 1 billion barrels at Alpine
Anadarko Petroleum Corp., on the strength of current and future satellite discoveries, has set a goal of increasing oil reserves passing through the Alpine production facilities from 430 million barrels to 1 billion barrels.
The company told analysts in a March 20 meeting that 160 million barrels of the 570 million barrels of additional reserves would come from three proven satellites and the remainder hopefully from future discoveries near the Alpine field.
The additional reserves would help sustain Alpine production at roughly 100,000 barrels a day for the next 10 years, Anadarko said. The company said Alpine is expected to produce its first 100 million barrels by the end of the year. Alpine launched production in November 2000.
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