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North Slope winter work completed Puviaq rig reportedly off NPR-A well, stacked at Camp Lonely Kristen Nelson Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief
Alaska North Slope winter exploration work has wrapped up, although completion data is not yet available on all wells.
The ConocoPhillips Alaska 1 Oberon, drilled to a measured depth of 7,580 feet and a true vertical depth of 7,491 feet, was completed Feb. 20 from a surface location in section 9, township 10 north range 6 east, Umiat Meridian.
Oberon was the first of two wells required by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources Division of Oil and Gas as a condition of a Colville River unit expansion, approved last year. The expansion area includes 26,625 acres at the southeast corner of the unit. The state required that one Oberon well be completed by June 1 this year and a second by June 1, 2004. The Oberon expansion area lands must be included in an approved Colville River unit participating area within five years.
The total expansion approval was 59,865 acres and is subject to a work program, bid deferment payments, changes in lease agreement terms and automatic contraction provisions.
Other expansion areas include: Titania (16,259 acres west of Oberon), Nanuq (10,210 acres south of the existing unit) and Fiord (6,722 acres at the northwest corner). Oooguruk Pioneer Natural Resources Alaska announced preliminary results of its three east Harrison Bay exploration wells in late March, saying the wells did not find a commercial extension of the productive Kuparuk C sands at the Kuparuk River field onshore to the southeast, but did find "thick sections of oil-bearing Jurassic-aged sands."
The Oooguruk, completed March 29, was a vertical 6,900-foot hole in section 31-T14N-R8E, UM. The Natchiq, completed March 31, had a measured depth of 7,500 feet and a true vertical depth of 6,740 feet from a surface location in 16-T13N-R8E, UM, to a bottomhole location in 17-T13N-R8E, UM.
The Ivik, completed April 9, had a measured depth of 6,943 feet and a true vertical depth of 6,942 feet, both in 6-T13N-R8E, UM.
Pioneer has applied to form the Oooguruk oil and gas unit in the area: the three wells already completed are the work commitment for the five-year plan. Hot Ice in mothballs Hot Ice, the Anadarko Petroleum hydrate core well south of Kuparuk, being drilled from the company's prototype Arctic platform, is in mothballs, Anadarko's Mark Hanley told Petroleum News May 14. "We're planning to finish up later this year," he said. Anadarko is discussing with regulators when it can go back in, using rolligons.
He said the well has been "suspended, but not in the traditional sense." The company had drilled to just above where it thinks the hydrate zone will be, he said.
“We’ll go back and finish coring in early winter” using rolligons, he said, and will also test the well at that time.
Hot Ice is in 30-T9N-R8E, UM. McCovey a dry hole McCovey, the Beaufort Sea well drilled north of Prudhoe Bay by EnCana Oil & Gas for itself and partners ConocoPhillips and ChevronTexaco, was plugged and abandoned in early February. ConocoPhillips wrote the well off as a dry hole.Puviaq The only well drilled this winter in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska is Puviaq, the ConocoPhillips Alaska exploration well at the western NPR-A prospect where the company stored a rig over the summer on an insulated ice pad. The company told regulators it might move that rig east in NPR-A after this drilling season, or over-summer it again in the Puviaq area, depending on this winter's drilling results.
Puviaq is in 35-T16N-R10W, UM. It was permitted as a vertical hole.
ConocoPhillips told regulators that if the rig was moved, it could spend the summer on an insulated ice pad at the Kokoda prospect in 27-T11N-R5W, UM; or at the Carbon prospect in 4-T10N-R1E, UM. Both are in NPR-A.
Puviaq is west of Teshekpuk Lake; Kokoda is south of the eastern end of the lake, about halfway back to the edge of NPR-A from Puviaq; Carbon is south of Harrison Bay, some 30-35 miles west from Kokoda.
Nabors Alaska Drilling rig 16-E is off the well and at Camp Lonely, a staging area on the Arctic coast.
The rig is available and will be barged to Deadhorse this summer and stacked there.
ConocoPhillips told Petroleum News May 14 that it has no information to share on Puviaq.
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