Prudhoe production rising; North Slope still down by about 100,000 bpd

Kristen Nelson

Alaska Department of Revenue numbers show Prudhoe Bay crude oil production rising at mid-September, but still well below early August numbers. The department noted at mid-September that “planned and unplanned maintenance continues to keep North Slope production below 900,000 barrels per day.”

“All Prudhoe Bay facilities are operating normally,” BP Exploration (Alaska) spokesman Daren Beaudo told Petroleum News Sept. 16.

Before scheduled maintenance in the second week of August slowed production at the BP-operated Prudhoe Bay field, the North Slope’s largest, production had been as much as 472,004 bpd on Aug. 3. It dropped to as low as 108,495 bpd on Aug. 17 and by Sept. 14 was back up to 374,562 bpd.

Overall North Slope production was down beginning in mid-July when ConocoPhillips took the Alpine field down for a month’s construction and maintenance work, and most fields had maintenance scheduled to coincide with an early August maintenance and construction shutdown of the trans-Alaska pipeline.

Alpine production now reflects phase one of facility expansion at that field, hitting 117,218 bpd Aug. 12. The field’s capacity has been in the 100,000-105,000 bpd range, and was expected to grow by 5,000 bpd from this summer’s work, which increased produced water handling capacity. Capacity at Alpine will increase to 140,000 bpd after facility expansion work is completed next summer.

BP also had maintenance planned at Prudhoe in August and Beaudo said that work at Gathering Center 2, which began Aug. 11, also included a systems upgrade on a reboiler, which conditions natural gas before re-injection, and cleaning out separation vessels to remove sands associated with viscous oil production. “It is our expectation that by removing these sediments we will be able to process more viscous oil,” he said.

Beaudo said earlier in September that Gathering Center 2 was offline from Aug. 11, when it was shut down for planned maintenance, until it started to come back online Sept. 9. The Gathering Center 2 problem was due to an instrument system upgrade on equipment at the center, which didn’t work as designed when it was tested prior to restart, and required “re-engineering and redesigning.”