Two new drill pads planned

Petroleum News Alaska Staff

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued an application revision Feb. 23 for work planned by ARCO Alaska Inc. in the western operating area of the Prudhoe Bay unit. A notice published Jan. 24 listed one pad, the Northwest Eileen 1 and an access road, the total requiring approximately 244,000 cubic yards of gravel into approximately 30.6 acres of tundra.

The Feb. 23 revision said that ARCO will build two new gravel drill pads, the Northwest Eileen 1 and the NW Eileen G4 drill site, along with the 3.1 mile access road. The Northwest Eileen 1 drill site will be 500 feet by 800 feet; the G4 drill site will be 543 feet by 300 feet. The NW Eileen 1 drill site is at the at the end of the new access road; the second proposed drill site is approximately a mile in along the new access road, southeast of the proposed NW Eileen 1 pad.

The revised notice said the project will require a total of 34.52 acres of fill and that 279,000 cubic yards of clean gravel fill will be required, approximately 159,000 cubic yards of gravel coming from the Kuparuk Deadarm gravel mine and the remaining 120,000 cubic yards from gravel recovery from roads and pads. The Corps said use of abandoned sites for clean gravel recovery is a mitigation measure to reduce impacts to aquatic environment.

The public comment period on the revised notice closes March 8. The work is expected to be done this winter.