Kuparuk production tops 2B barrel mark

ConocoPhillips said July 20 that the Kuparuk oil field on Alaska’s North Slope produced its 2 billionth barrel of oil July 20. The ConocoPhillips-operated field is the nation’s second largest producing oil field, and has been in operation since 1981.

The original recovery estimate for the field was only about 2 billion barrels, and ConocoPhillips said the increase in recovery comes from “improved oil recovery methods and development of innovative technology that finds and extracts more oil from the field.”

The Greater Kuparuk Area also has production from Tarn, Tabasco, West Sak and Meltwater. Total production is some 185,000 barrels per day, of which some 140,000 bpd is from the Kuparuk reservoir.

The Alaska Division of Oil and Gas estimated in its 2004 annual report that Kuparuk and its satellites had remaining reserves of 1.617 billion barrels which the division said was based on an “aggressive heavy oil component.” The division’s estimate included 960 million barrels from the Kuparuk reservoir, 530 million barrels from heavy oil at West Sak and 126 million barrels combined from satellites Tabasco, Tarn and Meltwater.

ConocoPhillips Alaska has a 55 percent share of the Greater Kuparuk Area. BP Exploration owns 39 percent; Unocal and ExxonMobil have smaller shares.

ConocoPhillips said that since 1981 the Greater Kuparuk Area has paid nearly $1 billion in property taxes to local and state government and an additional $7 billion in royalty and severance taxes to the unrestricted general fund of the State of Alaska.

Kuparuk owners have invested about $7 billion in capital to develop the field.

—Petroleum News