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Alaska independent spuds first well on North Slope
Kay Cashman Petroleum News Publisher & Managing Editor
Winstar Petroleum LLC’s owners have said from the start that they expect their company to be the first Alaska-owned independent producer on Alaska’s North Slope. After three years in negotiations, the Anchorage independent took the next critical step on June 26 when ConocoPhillips Alaska spud Winstar’s first well, the Oliktok Point State No. 1.
The well was drilled from onshore drill site 3-R on the northern edge of the Kuparuk River unit to an offshore target that is part of Winstar’s 1,280-acre lease, the company president, Jim Weeks, told Petroleum News. The lease was recently included in the Kuparuk unit, which is operated by ConocoPhillips.
Weeks said the target, Kuparuk-A sands, is at 7,000 vertical true depth; actual depth is 11,200 feet.
“We should penetrate the target within 10 days,” he said. “If the first hole is non-productive we have designed the well for an option to drill into another fault block.”
Seventy-two percent of Winstar is owned by Alaskans, including Weeks and his wife Marty Weeks, Dale and Carol Lindsey, and John and Bert Winther. Processing deal already cut The company’s deal with ConocoPhillips includes not only the use of infrastructure, equipment and services, but also processing facilities.
“If we find something we know the terms and conditions under which it is going to get processed through the Kuparuk facilities,” Weeks said. The deal Winstar struck with ConocoPhillips was “reasonable,” he said. Weeks praises state, contractors The Murkowski administration wanted to see the well drilled, Weeks said. “Everybody likes to see the little guy win; they wanted this to happen. … All the state offices — the governor’s office, DNR — were very professional in dealing with us, very timely in responding to our requests. I don’t have anything but praise for their professionalism and their competence.”
Weeks also praised the key contractors involved in the up-front process.
“Bill Penrose at Fairweather E&P designed the well, did the well planning and put all the permit applications together for ConocoPhillips to file. Bill did a heck of a job on that for us,” Weeks said.
He also commended PRA — i.e. Petrotechnical Resources of Alaska — which handled the geoscience: “I can’t thank Tom Walsh, Doug Hastings, and Martin Novak enough. They did a great job.”
Winstar used Chroma Energy’s proprietary pattern recognition and pattern enabled visualization software for further evaluation of the Oliktok Point prospect. Weeks said Chroma has a success rate of more than 75 percent in finding oil and gas.
“We bought some long 2-D seismic lines from WesternGeco shot by ARCO over the southern part of our lease. We had CGG, a geophysical company out of Calgary, utilize its AVO — amplitude versus offset — technology on the 2D, which can help locate hydrocarbons,” Weeks said, complimenting the work of both Chroma and CGG.
“We also bought 3D from ARCO and BP. I should mention that ARCO and BP were very cooperative in selling us seismic for this prospect,” he said.
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