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Oil Patch Insider
Palmer signs Pioneer as first client; TotalFinaElf to open Anchorage office Feb.1 With the ink barely dry on his corporate retirement papers, Jim Palmer opened the doors of a new entrepreneurial venture this January. The shiny nameplate at 1400 West Benson, Suite 350, reads “Palmer Group.”
Services include management consulting, strategic planning and government and public relations — services Jim provided as an executive with BP Exploration in Anchorage during his 22 years with the company.
Jim’s respected political savvy evolved during stints with the Alaska Legislature’s Joint Committee on Oil and Gas and the Senate Resources Committee in the early 1980s, and with U.S. Senator Mike Gravel during the 1970s. He is also well-known for his dedicated participation in civic and philanthropic activities benefiting Alaska and Anchorage.
Jim’s first major client is Pioneer Natural Resources Co. of Dallas, Texas. Pioneer is the first independent oil and gas company not partnered with BP, ExxonMobil or ConocoPhillips that plans to both explore and operate a field on Alaska’s North Slope. Pioneer has interests in 14,000 acres between the Kuparuk River unit and Thetis Island where it is drilling three wells this winter.
Jim’s wife of 26 years, Sheila, and the two Palmer children are enjoying the flexibility of dad’s new work schedule. Son Colin is a freshman at Chugiak, and daughter Aneliese is in the seventh grade at Gruening Middle School. TotalFinaElf to open Anchorage office Feb. 1 If you wondered why there was a photo of TotalFinaElf’s Alaska manager, Jack Bergeron, in the Jan. 19 Petroleum News Alaska story about TotalFinaElf building a North American base that didn’t mention Jack’s name, it was because his photo was supposed to be part of a sidebar that told readers where his new Alaska office was located and when it would open.
Jack said TotalFinaElf’s office will be in the Alaska Energy Building at 4300 B St., Suite 303, Anchorage, AK 99503.
It will open Feb. 1
The phone number will be 907 743-0970.
For those of you who missed it, TotalFinaElf re-entered Alaska in June with its successful bid for 20 leases in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Enstar wants to relocate Beluga gasline Enstar is proposing an emergency relocation of a portion of the Beluga gas pipeline. The company told the state the pipeline is eroding in the Susitna River in an area within a state game refuge.
The Beluga gasline in is on the west side of Cook Inlet.
The Alaska Division of Governmental Coordination has scheduled a pre-application meeting for Jan. 31. Chignik water well doesn’t find coal The Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys helped fund a water well at Chignik Lagoon on the Alaska Peninsula this fall to get a look at what coals the well would intersect.
Unfortunately, DGGS geologist Jim Clough said Jan. 16, they never saw the coal seam they were looking. The upside, he said, is that Fish and Game got a great 720-foot water well at their fish weir!
The project is part of a DGGS evaluation of coalbed methane as an energy source in rural Alaska and includes Wainwright on the North Slope and Fort Yukon in the Interior.
Clough said funding provided to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium for water well drilling will entitle DGGS to another 500 feet of well. We want to try again, he said, “because it’s an inexpensive way to get some subsurface data in the area.” Cuttings from KIC well hauled to Lower 48, not Prudhoe Security was so tight when the KIC #1 well was drilled in the mid-1980s in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that oil-based cuttings from the drilling operation were hauled to the Lower 48 (we heard Utah) instead of being disposed of at Prudhoe Bay.
Why? Geologists can tell a lot about what’s in a well from studying the cuttings and there were oil scouts from competitive oil companies “all over the place,” one PNA source said. With the belief that an ANWR lease sale was imminent, Chevron and BP did not want a scout collecting the cuttings.
The KIC #1 was the only well ever drilled in ANWR’s coastal plain. Well results remain confidential to this day. TOTE promotes Greg Kessler Greg Kessler, who has been a sales associate at Totem Ocean Trailer Express since 1998, just got promoted to Alaska finance manager. He’s based in Anchorage.
Before joining TOTE, Greg worked for Yellow Freight Systems for 10 years. Toward the end of his time with them he was account branch manager.
Editor’s note: Oil Patch Insider is compiled by Paula Easley and Kay Cashman. If you have information of interest, please email [email protected] or call 907 245-2297.
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