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Extreme cold hinders North Slope winter exploration drilling
Record breaking cold in northern Alaska has interfered with North Slope exploration programs, eating into the already short window of January to mid-April for winter drilling.
The majority of ice roads being constructed for this year’s winter exploration season are in the western coastal region. Due to a lack of adequate snow cover, the area wasn’t opened for off-road tundra travel until Dec. 23, although mobilization and pre-packing of ice roads with tundra-approved off-road vehicles began around Dec. 1, depending on the location.
Repsol still plans 9 wells With temps dropping below minus 40 Fahrenheit in January, the most active explorer, Repsol E&P USA, lost several days to extremely low temperatures, putting some activities on hold or slowing them down. Nonetheless, Repsol allowed for down time in its schedule, and is still within the window to get its targeted nine wells from four ice pads completed this winter.
Because the North Slope Borough restricted the number of rigs Repsol could operate at one time from four to three, the company made a deal with Savant Alaska to take Nabors 9ES rig for the second half of the drilling season once Repsol has finished drilling at the Kachemach-1 ice pad, the closest site to its staging pad, which is near Meltwater Drill Site 2P in the Kuparuk River unit.
The ice pad and road to K-1 are complete. Weather permitting; the company hopes to start K-1 drilling operations in the next few days. (It takes about 21 days to drill a North Slope well.)
On Feb. 1 the morning temp at the North Slope community of Deadhorse was 53 degrees below zero. A break in the weather was predicted by the National Weather Service, starting the following day.
At 7 a.m. on Feb. 2, temps had risen to a balmy minus 22 F. According to Petroleum News sources on the North Slope, all the explorers and their contractors were out in force, trying to make up for lost time and hoping the “warmer” temps would last.
As for the other three Repsol drilling locations, all of Nabors Rig 105AC’s components are at the Q-2 location and they will soon begin rigging up.
Nabors 2ES is scheduled to begin mobilization to Q-1 around Feb. 10.
Drilling with Doyon’s Arctic Fox rig will not begin at Qugruk-4, the only offshore drill site, until drilling is completed at K-1, which is expected to be before March 1.
Savant holding on rig Once it has Nabors 9ES rig from Repsol, Savant plans to workover the B1-16 and B1-21 wells, and drill the Red Wolf No. 2 in its eastern North Slope Badami unit. The plan is to “install artificial lift in the workovers to be able to produce the wells to the plant,” Greg Vigil, company president, told Petroleum News Jan. 24. “Our 28-mile ice road to Badami is complete save a few final touches to make it rig ready. We are driving to Badami now.”
Right now “weather and time are the biggest challenge,” Vigil said. After the workovers the company will drill the onshore Red Wolf No. 2, a 12,000-foot vertical well on ADL 367005, in the western half of Badami unit.
The Red Wolf prospect sits outside the Badami Sands participating area, where development has primarily been focused since the unit first came online in 1998.
Savant’s program this winter involves an ice road, an ice well pad and two ice pad staging areas. The company, after providing necessary data, received permission from the Alaska Department of Natural Resources to start the road before off-road travel in the eastern coastal region was open.
Pioneer started on first well Casey Sullivan, direct of public affairs for Pioneer Natural Resources Alaska, said Feb. 1 that drilling was under way for the first of the Nuna exploration wells in the expansion area of the Oooguruk unit.
The program this winter involves drilling, hydraulic fracturing and testing two wells — one onshore and one offshore — as well as constructing associated ice roads and ice pads.
The offshore Sikumi No. 1 well will be a vertical well starting on ADL 355037, some two miles southwest of the existing Oooguruk Island, but still within the Oooguruk unit boundaries. The onshore Nuna No. 1 will be a directional well starting on ADL 25528, some 2.5 miles northwest of Kuparuk River unit drill site 3S.
Another victim of the cold weather, Pioneer said last year that it hoped to begin drilling Nuna No. 1 in early January and Sikumi No. 1 in mid-February, and continue hydraulic fracturing and flow testing operations through the end of April. Produced fluids would be taken to existing production facilities in the region.
While Sikumi No. 1 will be plugged and abandoned after completion, Pioneer plans to preserve Nuna No. 1 as a development well for future work in the region.
The company is using Nabors 27E for its Nuna program, the same rig that ExxonMobil used to drill its two latest wells at Point Thomson.
Brooks Range looks to complete 3 wells A joint venture led by Brooks Range Petroleum Corp. is looking to complete three wells this winter in its Southern Miluveach unit on the western boundary of the Kuparuk River unit.
In addition to re-entering the North Tarn No. 1-A sidetrack started last winter, Brooks Range plans to drill two wells from an ice pad to delineate the Mustang prospect.
Company executive Bart Armfield told Petroleum News Feb. 2 that “flow test operations are complete” for the sidetrack, “and are in the evaluation and analysis phase regarding results. Mustang 1 will spud today.”
The company considered drilling a third well, but because of weather-related delays, it’s unlikely more than two Mustang wells will be completed this winter.
Brooks Range is using Nabors rig 7ES.
Anadarko conducts rig-less test on gas well Also part of this winter’s exploration season is Anadarko Petroleum’s rig-less testing of its Chandler No. 1 gas well, which could mean the big independent and its partners might resurrect their multiyear drilling program at the Gubik Complex on state, federal and Native acreage in the lower Brooks Range Foothills.
Inactive since 2009, Anadarko’s program was the first exploration effort in northern Alaska to explicitly target natural gas for other than local use.
The Gubik Complex contains the undeveloped Chandler, Gubik and Wolf Creek gas fields.
To reach the well, Anadarko built a snow road from Franklin Bluffs, along the Dalton Highway, to Chandler No. 1 near the Colville River and the Umiat airstrip.
The rig-less test, already under way by Expro, includes hydraulic fracture stimulation being conducted by Schlumberger.
“We know there is gas there,” Anadarko executive Mark Hanley told Petroleum News last summer. “Testing will give us a lot more information about how the reservoir and rocks will perform, what kind of flow rates and volumes we can get.”
Great Bear drilling to start in spring The other oil and gas companies that wanted to drill this winter but were unable to find rigs were Great Bear Petroleum, Linc Energy and UltraStar Exploration. Linc and UltraStar’s wells will have to wait until next winter, the companies have said.
But Great Bear’s program is in an existing transportation/industrial corridor between the Dalton Highway and the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, which allows it to drill year-round.
According to the state’s oil and gas director, Bill Barron, the company has secured the primary government authorizations and permits necessary for its multi-well, proof of concept drilling and testing program, and expects to conduct site preparation work in March and April, followed by drilling.
Great Bear’s exploration and evaluation program, which targets three shale source rocks, is expected to take up to 12 months. The company has permitted six drill sites for six vertical wells, each with a horizontal extension, although Great Bear has said it expects only four drill sites will be needed.
See full story in the Jan. 29 edition of Petroleum News at http://bit.ly/AsdLvo.
—Kay Cashman
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