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ConocoPhillips planning two NPR-A wells The company plans to drill the Rendezvous No. 3 and Flattop No. 1 wells this winter at the federal Greater Mooses Tooth unit Eric Lidji For Petroleum News
ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc. plans to drill two exploration wells this winter.
The company has applied for permits to drill the Rendezvous No. 3 and Flattop No. 1 wells at its Greater Mooses Tooth unit in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
ConocoPhillips applied for a U.S. Bureau of Land Management drilling permit in November 2013 to drill Rendezvous No. 3 and in early January for Flattop No. 1.
The Rendezvous well is one of four locations ConocoPhillips staked on two leases near the center of the unit in September 2013. Rendezvous No. 3 would be on lease AA-81784. The Flattop well would be on lease AA-87896, at the eastern edge of the unit.
In its previously announced 2014 budget, ConocoPhillips included preliminary engineering and permitting for the GMT-1 development and two exploration wells. A decade at Rendezvous The Rendezvous prospect is among a group of discoveries from the early 2000s.
ConocoPhillips predecessor Phillips Alaska Inc. drilled the Rendezvous A well on lease AA-81803 in April 2000, drilled the Rendezvous No. 2 well on lease AA-81781 in April 2001 and returned to test Rendezvous No. 2 in early 2009. Both wells found oil.
An un-stimulated test of the Rendezvous A in 2001 flowed at a rate of 360 barrels per day of liquid hydrocarbons and 6.6 million cubic feet per day of gas. A test of Rendezvous No. 2 in early 2008 “ranged from about 500 barrels of oil per day to as high as 1,300 barrels of oil per day of high API gravity oil” and gas production rates “averaged about 1.5 million cubic feet per day for each well,” according to the company.
In September 2013, ConocoPhillips staked four potential Rendezvous locations: the Rendezvous No. 3 and Rendezvous No. 3 South wells on lease AA-81784, and the Rendezvous No. 3 North and Rendezvous No. 3 North 2 wells on lease AA-81803.
Phillips previously staked a Rendezvous No. 3 well on lease AA-81800.
Flattop relocations The Flattop prospect is a more recent target.
In 2001, Phillips Alaska staked a Tuvaaq No. 1 well and a Tuvaaq No. 2 well on AA-81798, a small lease adjacent to AA-87896, but ultimately drilled neither. In October 2008, ConocoPhillips staked a Flattop No. 1 well on the same lease, AA-81798. In August 2013, ConocoPhillips began permitting a GMT-1-B2 oil well on lease AA-81798.
When the BLM approved the Greater Mooses Tooth unit in 2008, the unit boundaries partially included AA-81798. ConocoPhillips expanded the unit in 2009 to include four leases along the eastern edge: AA-87896, AA-81797, AA-81796 and AA-81795.
In October 2012, ConocoPhillips staked a new Flattop No. 1 well location on AA-87896 and also a Flattop No. 2 well on AA-81796, but ultimately drilled neither well.
With the expansion, the BLM required that ConocoPhillips spud an exploration well — targeting the upper Jurassic — on the additional acreage by the third quarter of 2015.
The current Flattop No. 1 well proposal would fulfill that requirement.
—A copyrighted oil and gas lease map from Mapmakers Alaska was a research tool used in preparing this story.
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