|
Commission updates drilling permit terms
The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is amending its regulations to recognize the existence of multi-lateral wells: wells with concurrent production from more than one well branch.
The change includes amending the definition of well branch to include drilling below the conductor casing to access more than one objective, or when an initial bottomhole location is changed by plugging back and redrilling. Permit to drill requirements are also being amended to distinguish between a plug-back-and-redrill well branch and concurrent multiple well branches.
At a Sept. 6 hearing Winton Aubert, a petroleum engineer on the commission’s staff, said the staff has been identifying potential gaps in the agency’s regulations and ambiguities in some terms.
Aubert said in a case where one well path has been plugged and another well path drilled from the same bore, but they are not active at the same time, the second well path is commonly called a sidetrack.
In the case where there are two or more well paths away from a given well bore which are active concurrently, those well paths are commonly called laterals. Terminology standardized What the commission is proposing, Aubert said, is to standardize the terminology: every well path would be called a well branch.
Assistant Attorney General Rob Mintz said there is also another issue: a plug back has been referred to as an abandonment, which is not consistent with the commission’s regulations because it implies that the entire well has been plugged and abandoned. Under the proposed changes, he said, this is clarified to specify that it is a well branch which will be plugged.
Judy Brady, executive director of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, said AOGA’s task group for AOGCC reviewed the proposed regulations. The amendments “provide clarity in permitting proposed drilling locations and provide a clear definition of a ‘well branch’.” Brady also said the amendments do not change the current process for drilling permits and do not additionally burden operators.
Commission Chairman John Norman asked if changes in technology were a factor in these amendments, and Aubert said that when the commission last revised its regulations industry was not drilling multi-lateral wells. Five well branches are active in one North Slope well, Aubert said, the maximum for Alaska and also for the industry worldwide.
—Kristen Nelson
| 