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Anadarko talking with Pioneer about adding adjacent lease to Oooguruk unit
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News editor-in-chief
Anadarko Petroleum holds a state of Alaska oil and gas lease which is pretty much in the middle of the Pioneer Natural Resources-Armstrong Oil and Gas Oooguruk unit off Alaska’s North Slope. This lease, long past its original expiration date, is still valid because the state has certified a well on the lease, Exxon’s 1993 Thetis Island No. 1, as capable of producing in paying quantities.
Anadarko is required to present a plan of development for the lease every year.
The company told the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas June 28 that its plans for the next year of the lease (Aug. 1, 2004, through July 31, 2005) are to continue working on “regional interpretations and reservoir quality predictions” for the area of the lease, as well data becomes available from the Oooguruk, Ivik and Natchiq wells.
Those were the wells drilled by Pioneer and Armstrong in the winter of 2002-03 on leases that are now part of the Oooguruk unit (Pioneer 70 percent, Armstrong 30 percent), in the shallow waters of Harrison Bay. Oooguruk is northwest of, and adjacent to, the ConocoPhillips Alaska-operated Kuparuk River unit.
Anadarko said it will continue talking with Pioneer “and evaluate participation in any proposed redefined Oooguruk unit” and will identify any owners of seismic over the area who might be interested in a joint reprocessing effort.
In the current plan year (August 2003-July 2004), Anadarko said it upgraded regional interpretations and reservoir quality predictions; continued talking with Pioneer about participation in the Oooguruk unit “as it may be expanded for the development of the Nechelik potential” and participated (with Pioneer) in licensing a three-dimensional seismic survey shot in 2000 over the southeast Colville Delta and Fiord. Pioneer-Armstrong discovery came in 2003 In April 2003, after Pioneer announced a Jurassic oil discovery at the Ivik, Natchiq and Oooguruk wells in what the company was then calling the Northwest Kuparuk prospect, Alaska Division of Oil and Gas Director Mark Myers told Petroleum News that three Jurassic sandstones are known in the area. Myers said north of Kuparuk and all the way to the Alpine field and into the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska “there are a series of three upper Jurassic-aged sandstones that are known to contain oil … staggering amounts of oil — the Alpine sand being the youngest, the Nuiqsut and the Nechelik.”
In June 2003, when Myers approved Anadarko’s 2003-04 plan of development, he noted that Anadarko had declined an invitation from Pioneer to include the lease in the Oooguruk unit.
Myers said in his approval that “development of the lease is likely dependent on negotiations with the working interest owners in the adjacent leases” to form a unit with a plan of development and operating plan acceptable to all the parties.
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