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BLM defends its work on ‘legacy wells’
Officials with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management say the agency is monitoring environmental risk from old wells on federal land on Alaska’s North Slope, and is updating plans for remediating the drill sites.
The comments come in response to an Alaska state legislator’s charge that the BLM has neglected the dozens of so-called legacy wells.
Rep. Charisse Millett, R-Anchorage, is sponsoring House Joint Resolution 29, which urges the BLM “to plug legacy wells properly and to reclaim the legacy well sites as soon as possible.”
Artealia Gilliard, spokeswoman for BLM Alaska, told Petroleum News the agency’s priority is monitoring those wells posing the most risk.
Extreme coastal erosion has threatened a few legacy well sites, and the BLM has spent large sums to deal with those.
Government drilling The BLM manages the Indiana-sized National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, located to the west of Alpine, Kuparuk, Prudhoe Bay and other central North Slope oil fields.
Between 1943 and 1982, the Navy and the U.S. Geological Survey drilled 136 wells and “test holes.”
“It would be great if we could go out and remediate them all at once, but it’s just not realistic,” Gilliard said.
An email from Gilliard said the legacy drilling was done “to establish the feasibility of using modern petroleum exploration and production methods in arctic conditions.”
The email continued: “Some of the existing wells provide for a better understanding of changes in the arctic environment in the NPR-A. Seventeen of the legacy wells were partially plugged and are used by the U.S. Geological Survey to monitor changes to permafrost depths associated with climate change.”
Millett charges the BLM is presiding over “a disgrace,” with her resolution saying only seven of the legacy wells have been “properly plugged and reclaimed.”
Some of the well sites are junk-strewn and “flagrantly out of compliance” with state regulations, the legislative resolution says.
Private companies couldn’t get away with that, Millett said.
Remediation review Gilliard’s email said the BLM actually has plugged and remediated 12 legacy wells since 2002.
Most recently, the Drew Point well was plugged in 2010 at a cost of $16.8 million, and the Umiat No. 9 well was plugged in 2011 at a cost of $2.5 million, the email said.
The BLM has plans for dealing with the legacy wells going forward.
The agency plans to plug three additional high-priority wells by the end of 2013 at Umiat, Gilliard’s email said.
“Based upon the environmental risk, the BLM is updating the 2004 legacy well report and re-prioritizing the remediation of the remaining wells in coordination with the State of Alaska,” the email said. “Upon completion of this assessment, the BLM will request additional funds for future remediations.”
An article in the forthcoming winter 2011-12 issue of Frontiers, BLM Alaska’s newsletter, discusses the extreme coastal erosion occurring along the NPR-A coastline, especially near Pogik Bay.
The article quotes a USGS scientist as saying some locations have eroded inland the length of nearly nine football fields since 1955.
In response to erosion, the BLM capped three wells — the J.W. Dalton in 2004, the Atigaru in 2009 and the Drew Point in 2010, the article says.
—Wesley Loy
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