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Ice roads, module construction under way for Northstar BP Exploration (Alaska) plans to put Liberty up for sanction this year; if approved, project could have first oil by 2003 Kristen Nelson PNA News Editor
Heavy winds and warm weather slowed ice road construction for BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc.’s Northstar project, but the company still expects to complete scheduled island and pipeline construction this winter season.
That was the update offered by Greg Mattson, BP Exploration (Alaska)’s new business unit leader for Alaska new developments at the Pacific Rim Construction Oil & Mining Conference Feb. 16 in Anchorage.
Mattson, a reservoir engineer by training, said he had been in Alaska about three weeks.
One ice road complete “Between the blows that have come through and relatively warm weather, ice road production has not been what it might have been in other years,” Mattson said. “But now we’re making good progress. The ice road is completed for the gravel haul and … reasonably good production from the ice road that will actually support the pipeline construction which has to be built to a higher standard due to the size of the equipment.”
The work is somewhat behind where it might have been in the best case, but he said the company is “still quite confident that we can complete what we need to this winter.”
Module construction for Northstar is going full tilt, he said, with the first sealift scheduled for this year.
Drilling at Northstar will begin this December or January 2001, with first oil expected at the end of 2001. The main process modules will complete island construction in August 2001.
He said the Northstar field is well delineated, with published reserves at about 145 million barrels gross, “and we see some upside on that number.”
There is gas available “and opportunity for enhanced oil recovery which has now been incorporated into design of the facilities and planning for EOR projects are well on track.” Timing of EOR will be determined by reservoir performance, but Mattson said he did not expect that it would be years down the road.
Peak construction will be March to April, with some 700 working on the project in Anchorage, Fairbanks and on the North Slope. About half of the more than $600 million capital spend in Alaska in 2000 is Northstar, Mattson said.
Liberty to go for sanction this year The Liberty field offshore between Endicott and Badami is scheduled to come along about two years after Northstar, Mattson said. Reserves there are published at about 120 million barrels, he said.
The current schedule, he said, is “predicated on us achieving project sanction this year. We’re currently sort of targeting having a case to put before the executive committee and the BP board around the end of the second quarter. It’s not a slam dunk that it will be approved. Certainly some high hurdles in the rest of BP Amoco’s portfolio that we’re basically competing for funds against.”
But, he said, Liberty is a good project with “a very good Endicott-type reservoir and tying into the existing pipeline that ties development to Endicott.”
Mattson said BP Exploration is doing a lot of additional subsurface work on Liberty right now to see if “better understanding of reservoir would lead to higher reserve recovery.
If the project receives sanction this year, he said, permitting would occur through 2002 with a first sealift scheduled for that year. First oil would be in the third quarter of 2003, although Mattson said that one thing they are looking at to make the project more viable is to find ways to start production earlier.
Point Thomson gas Another development project for the company is Point Thomson, and Mattson noted that field is “quite a long distance from existing Prudhoe Bay infrastructure” although Badami is half the distance from Prudhoe to Point Thomson.
He also noted that Point Thomson has a lot of gas, some 6-8 trillion cubic feet, and gas is more important to the company than it has been in the past.
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