BP working mechanical issues at Badami

BP Exploration (Alaska) brought its eastern North Slope Badami field back on line briefly in mid-September, producing less than 500 barrels of oil Sept. 17, BP spokesman Daren Beaudo told Petroleum News Sept. 21.

Production from the field got up as high as 1,900 barrels per day on Sept. 20 before the field was shut down so that problems with a vapor recovery unit could be fixed. “At that point we hadn’t opened up all five producing wells, nor had each well operated at 100 percent,” Beaudo said.

All wells had not been put on production yet, he said, nor were they fully producing.

Beaudo said the mechanical problems with the vapor recovery unit are not unusual for a field that’s been down for a couple of years. The equipment handles low-pressure vapor from vessels, vapor which is recompressed and reinjected.

Air permit regulations do not allow flaring of the gas, he said, so production has been shut down until the equipment is running.

“It should be a matter of days until normal operations resume”, Beaudo said, with production expected to be back up as soon as the weekend of Sept. 24-25.

Field shut down in 2003

The state approved a two-year suspension of production and the mothballing of the field’s facilities beginning Aug. 1, 2003, and ending June 30, 2005.

When BP applied to restart the Badami field earlier this year it said it planned to test new recovery techniques and said it would do well drilling and workover activity from the existing pad.

Beaudo said Sept. 15 that the Badami restart was planned for the weekend of Sept. 10 but was “delayed by weather, both in getting people out to the site and in doing an over flight of the pipeline.”

Prior to startup BP piped natural gas to Badami from Endicott and tested the flare system, and backfilled the oil pipeline with oil from Endicott.

—Kristen Nelson