Companies prepacking ice roads on NS

ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Pioneer Natural Resources and Repsol have all been prepacking ice roads, in preparation for winter off-road work on Alaska’s North Slope, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources told Petroleum News Nov. 26. ExxonMobil will be working on its Point Thomson development project. ConocoPhillips is moving ahead with developing its CD-5 satellite oil field in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and may drill a couple of exploration wells in the Greater Moose’s Tooth Unit. Pioneer is preparing the ice road that it constructs each winter to the offshore production island for the Oooguruk oil field. And Repsol is conducting a winter exploration drilling program.

On Nov. 21 DNR issued a notice saying that all state-owned land remains closed for off-road travel. Although soil temperatures are beginning to drop below freezing at all monitoring stations and required snow depths have been reached in both the eastern and western coastal areas, subsurface temperatures remain too high for the opening of winter tundra travel, the agency said. Snow depths are insufficient at a couple of locations in the lower foothills area and are too thin in general in the upper foothills.

Although full-scale ice-road construction requires winter tundra travel to be open, enabling regular vehicles to traverse ice-road routes to conduct construction activities, companies generally try to achieve a head start on the construction season by using tundra-certified vehicles to prepack the snow along the routes and spray the routes with water to stabilize the snow.

—Alan Bailey