AOGCC seeking overlooked North Slope gas

The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is studying old North Slope wells to determine how much natural gas may have been overlooked in the search for oil.

The study involves reviewing hundreds of well files to search for clues suggesting gas potential, AOGCC petroleum geologist Art Saltmarsh said during a meeting on March 7.

The files mostly cover plugged and abandoned exploration wells drilled for oil during the early days of development when gas was barely an afterthought. “Consequently, the gas potential often was not fully estimated,” AOGCC Commissioner John Norman said, adding that the AOGCC sees it as a “companion project” to efforts by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources to “exploit the value of North Slope natural gas.”

The project involves searching for telling details, such as a change in mud weights throughout particular zones that may indicate the presence of natural gas, Saltmarsh said.

Since beginning the project toward the end of last year, Saltmarsh has reviewed the well files and mud logs from around 190 wells and expects to complete another 160 wells sometimes in the second half of the year. After that, he plans to quantify the information from the logs to determine the stranded and bypass gas potential of the North Slope.

The project is possible in some measure because most wells have long since passed out of the two-year confidential period the AOGCC extends to all exploration wells, but Saltmarsh noted that some wells in the study remain proprietary and the information from those wells could only be released within the boundaries of confidential agreements.

—Eric Lidji