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BP pulls Liberty development plan; will submit more cost-effective scenario
Kay Cashman PNA Publisher
The U.S. Minerals Management Service told other affected state and federal agencies July 8 that BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. has withdrawn its development and production plan for its Beaufort Sea Liberty prospect.
The action was preceded by a January announcement that BP was putting the project on hold, and a March 5 letter from MMS to agencies saying BP recommended that processing of permit applications be suspended.
On March 5, MMS said BP also indicated informally that submission of a modified development and production plan for Liberty could take six months or more.
On July 26, MMS officials told PNA that BP withdrew its development and production plan because “it is our understanding that scenario is dead and that BP is working on a more cost-effective development scenario.”
One such option, MMS officials told PNA, was to do processing onshore at Endicott or Badami.
In a June 6 letter to MMS, BP wrote that it is reevaluating the Liberty development plan and that “re-evaluation contains a number of different development scenarios,” ranging “from moving the proposed development island to the construction of a drilling island with a 3-phase flow back to existing infrastructure.”
Initial plan included offshore production facilities In its initial development plan, BP proposed to develop the Liberty prospect from a gravel island located about 5 miles from shore in the Beaufort Sea 20 miles east of Prudhoe Bay, and about 8 miles east of its Endicott development.
According to MMS officials, the proposal was modeled after BP’s Beaufort Sea Northstar project and included a self-contained offshore drilling and production facility on a man-made gravel island and a sub-sea and onshore pipeline that would connect to the Badami oil pipeline.
BP estimates the Liberty prospect contains 120 million barrels of recoverable oil. The state of Alaska would share 27 percent of the federal royalties.
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