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Anadarko back for gas? Pending partner OK, company looking to revive Brooks Range Foothills program Kay Cashman Petroleum News
Anadarko Petroleum Corp. “intends to continue” its multiyear drilling program at the Gubik and Chandler prospects in the Brooks Range Foothills, according to a recent letter the Texas independent sent to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources.
W.C. “Chuck” Rowe, Anadarko’s drilling operations manager in Alaska, made the announcement in a letter to DNR’s Division of Land, Mining and Water, as part of an application to modify an existing land use permit. The permit would allow Anadarko to do summer preparatory work for building a temporary access road this coming winter to its previously drilled Chandler gas well, located west of the Colville River near Umiat.
Known as the “Gubik Complex” by Anadarko and its partners, the program on state, federal and Native leases in the foothills was the first and still the only exploration effort in northern Alaska to explicitly target natural gas, but has been inactive since early 2009.
‘Rig-less’ well test Anadarko hopes to test the well this winter, according to Petroleum News sources, but the official filings made to date are more ambiguous about the timing of the program — Rowe’s cover letter indicates “this summer,” but the application itself said 2011 or 2012.
In the application, Anadarko said it plans to set thermistor strings along the route to provide real-time ground temperature data in preparation for constructing a winter road when the tundra is frozen enough to support wheeled equipment.
PN sources said Anadarko is committed to resuming the multiyear, multi-well program, but does not yet have partner approval from BG Group and Suncor Energy for the first step in that process — a “rig-less” test of the previously-drilled Chandler well.
Partner decisions are expected in mid-July.
The only reason Anadarko, operator of the shared leases, began permitting ahead of partner approval was because waiting until mid-July to file for modification of the existing land use permit would have cost the project a season, PN sources at DNR said.
Sharing costs with Linc In a map accompanying the filing (www.petroleumnews.com/pnfm/thermistorlocationsmap.pdf ), Anadarko proposed a temporary winter road beginning at the Dalton Highway and moving westward and slightly southward to the Chandler site near the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
PN sources said Anadarko is talking to Linc Energy about sharing the cost of the winter road. Linc recently acquired a controlling interest in the Umiat oil field and is looking for a rig to fly out to its project for winter exploration and delineation drilling.
Anadarko spud Chandler No. 1 in early 2008, but cut drilling short that year because of seasonal restrictions. Anadarko also drilled the much shallower Gubik No. 3 well that winter in the undeveloped Gubik gas field, east of the Colville River. The company completed Chandler No. 1 in early 2009, and also drilled two other new wells, Gubik No. 4 and Wolf Creek No. 4. Wolf Creek is in the NPR-A about 40 miles west of Umiat.
Together, these prospects make up the Gubik Complex, a series of gas fields stretching across more than 100 miles of Native, state and federal land. Petro-Canada, a former partner in the program, said the three wells that were tested “all encountered natural gas.” The first Gubik well, in fact, tested at rates of up to 15 million cubic feet per day, proving up the previously discovered, but undeveloped, Gubik gas field.
The natural gas in the foothills of the North Slope isn’t consolidated into a single massive deposit like Prudhoe Bay or Point Thomson, though. Instead, it is spread across several larger deposits in a remote and undeveloped area of the state.
Anadarko had been trying to decide whether it could strategically develop the region.
“The determining factor? If we can find three fields to make it that might work,” Anadarko official Mark Hanley said in early 2009. “If it’s going to take us seven that might not be economic.”
Anadarko wanted to test Chandler in early 2010, but decided that launching a winter exploration program to test one well wouldn’t be cost effective. The company then hoped to conduct the test and drill two more wells in early 2011, but that also didn’t happen.
Suncor replaced Petro-Canada The program most likely did not move forward in 2010 because Anadarko got a new partner in August 2009, when oil sands senior Suncor took over Petro-Canada. Suncor has never said what it intends to do with its one-third ownership in the foothills acreage.
Operator Anadarko said it hoped to ship future gas from Gubik to market through a future large-diameter North Slope gas line, or a smaller, in-state line to Southcentral Alaska.
Late last year PN sources said Anadarko was looking to sell most of its undeveloped acreage in Alaska. That still might be the case, but PN sources now say that Gov. Sean Parnell’s apparent support for an in-state gas line, a reduction in state oil production taxes and a year-round road to Umiat has revived Anadarko’s interest in the area.
Either way, the company would want to know the results of its Chandler well.
Editor’s note: Anadarko’s most successful partnership to date in Alaska has been with ConocoPhillips in the Colville River unit, which includes the Alpine oil field.
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