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Whiskey Gulch changes hands Brooks Range Petroleum picks up old oil prospect from Anadarko; leases are 20 miles south of Kuparuk operations center Kristen Nelson & Kay Cashman Petroleum News
Anadarko Petroleum has assigned 31 North Slope oil and gas leases to Brooks Range Petroleum, retaining a 2 percent overriding royalty. The leases are in an area south of the continuous Kuparuk River unit and east of Meltwater where Anadarko identified what it called the Whiskey Gulch prospect.
The oil prospect is 20 miles south of the ConocoPhillips-operated Kuparuk operations center in section 30 township 8 north range 9 east, Umiat Meridian, and 22-T9N-R9E, UM. Eighteen of the leases expire this year, two next year and the remainder in 2008 and 2009. Unitizing Whiskey Gulch could hold the leases but Brooks Range is not commenting on its plans at this time.
Anchorage-based Brooks Range is the North Slope operating firm for Alaska Venture Capital Group, the Wichita, Kan.-based independent headed by John Jay “Bo” Darrah. AVCG currently holds more than 120,000 acres of state oil and gas leases.
Ken Thompson, former head of ARCO Alaska, joined AVCG in late 2004 as a funding member and managing partner. Thompson is chairman of Brooks Range. (ARCO Alaska assets were purchased by Phillips Petroleum, which merged with Conoco to form ConocoPhillips.)
According to Anadarko paperwork filed in 2001 with permit applications to drill two exploration wells, Whiskey Gulch is an old prospect which ARCO had “drilled in and around.” Anadarko shot seismic at the prospect in 2000.
Anadarko got its permits to drill Whiskey Gulch A in section 30-8N-9E, UM and Whiskey Gulch B in section 22-9N-9E, UM, but did not drill them. The wells were permitted as a back-up to drilling the company was doing in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska in the winter of 2001-2002. In the event Anadarko had unexpected permitting problems for its NPR-A well or difficulty getting across the Colville River because of weather delays, it wanted a contingency drilling program in place. Permits good through Jan. 17 According to state paperwork, the Whiskey Gulch permits were good through Jan. 17, 2005.
After the winter of 2001-2002, Anadarko held off drilling any more of its own conventional wells on the North Slope for a number of reasons; none of which, company officials said, had anything to do with the prospectivity of Whiskey Gulch.
If the Whiskey Gulch wells had been drilled, Anadarko’s plan was to reach them by ice roads off the Kuparuk River 2K pad, using rolligons to transport water trucks to the well site to build ice pads as soon as tundra travel was allowed.
Ice road construction would have started in early December. There would have been 10.3 miles of ice road from pad 2K to a split, and a further three miles to Whiskey Gulch B from the split and six miles to Whiskey Gulch A from the split. The Whiskey Gulch B well was going to be drilled first, starting in January, with the Whiskey Gulch A well to follow in March. Nabors rig 14-E would be down and demobilization begun April 15 with the operation complete and inspected by May 15.
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