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Oil patch insider: Coyote may be another Nanushuk find; Dunleavy sues, appoints
Kay Cashman Petroleum News
ConocoPhillips executives said very little on June 30 about their latest discovery, Coyote, just west of Kuparuk.
The top dogs, Chairman and CEO Ryan Lance and Senior VP of global operations Nick Olds, mentioned it in their early morning virtual Market Update.
At RDC’s annual luncheon in Anchorage later that morning ConocoPhillips Alaska President Erec Isaacson said Coyote was in the Brookian topset above the Nuna Torok discovery, describing Coyote as shallow.
In other words, Coyote appears to be another in a long line of Nanushuk discoveries.
North Slope geologists that Petroleum News spoke to all said they thought Coyote was an extension of Oil Search’s Mitquq Nanushuk discovery; a younger, shallower interval than Nuna.
ConocoPhillips’ map in last week’s page 1 article titled Advancing Alaska shows Coyote parallel to the Narwhal trend, which is the name the company uses to describe the Pikka-Nanushuk trend and their own adjacent Narwhal trend.
Two 2020 Mitquq exploration penetrations discovered a separate reservoir lying to the east and parallel with the Pikka Nanushuk reservoir, its tentative length and width similar to that of Pikka - and west of Kuparuk.
It appears, however, that most of the leases around the area that do not belong to Oil Search are controlled by ConocoPhillips.
Isaacson said, “we will be taking a look at developing” Coyote, which he also said could be developed using Kuparuk infrastructure.
The Nanushuk up in the area of ConocoPhillips leases has “typically been pretty shaley and has varying gravities of crude oils due to the mixing of source rocks. But ConocoPhillips’ Coyote announcement tells me they see something encouraging or they wouldn’t be talking about it,” another long-time North Slope geologist said.
North Slope discoveries in the Nanushuk formation started in 2015, when innovative explorers Armstrong Oil & Gas and Repsol E&P USA made their Pikka discovery east of the Colville Delta.
ConocoPhillips followed with its Willow discovery in 2016, and in 2017 Armstrong and Repsol successfully drilled the Horseshoe No. 1, confirming that the Nanushuk topset trend extended south from Pikka.
In 2018, ConocoPhillips discovered West Willow while following up on information from its Putu and Stony Hill wells to define their Narwhal trend.
When asked whether ConocoPhillips Narwhal wells Putu and Stony Hill were in the Nanushuk formation, U.S. Geological Survey geologist Dave Houseknecht told Petroleum News in 2018 that they were. He had previously said Willow was also a Nanushuk discovery.
- Kay Cashman
Alaska sues Biden administration On July 7, the 63rd anniversary of the signing of the Alaska Statehood Act, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced the State of Alaska is suing the U.S. Department of the Interior for “illegally and unjustifiably extending decades-long restrictions on nearly 28 million acres of federal land in Alaska.”
The action by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland “blocks state land selections and Alaska Native Vietnam Veteran allotments,” the governor’s press release said.
“This is a methodical effort by the Biden administration - more than just bureaucratic foot dragging - to frustrate ANILCA and the Statehood land entitlement and leave these lands locked up as de facto parks,” said Dunleavy. “They are consciously ignoring and going around appropriate processes to hold things in perpetual limbo. It has needed to be challenged for a long time and it needs to be challenged now more than ever due to these new delays - and I am challenging it. The intent of ANILCA matters, these unnecessary withdrawals need to be lifted, and we need to finally move this process forward. This is another federal attempt to deny Alaska the full realization as a state promised under our Statehood Compact, and it should not stand.”
The Dunleavy administration contends that the withdrawals have prevented Alaska from exercising its Statehood right to claim valuable lands or assess the natural resources on these lands.
Under a 1971 federal law, the secretary could issue temporary land withdrawals to restrict the use of federal land in Alaska to allow Interior time to determine how federal lands should be used in the state. Many of these 1970s-era orders have never been lifted even though the “reasons for the withdrawals have been satisfied for decades,” Dunleavy’s press release said.
Under 16 such orders, about 28 million acres of land have “sat under outdated restrictions, all the while with the federal government proposing that the withdrawals be lifted but never doing so.”
In 2006, Interior’s Bureau of Land Management reported to Congress that the temporary withdrawals “could be lifted on over nearly all these areas without affecting the public interest. Following that report, BLM has completed numerous, multi-year reviews and land-use plans, each recommending that the withdrawals be lifted. In January of this year, then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt issued orders based on these extensive analyses to finally lift these 16 land withdrawals from about 28 million acres,” the Dunleavy release said.
Shortly after assuming office, however, President Biden’s new Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland, announced she was unilaterally repealing Secretary Bernhardt’s actions from taking affect for at least two years, explaining that Interior needed to conduct even more analyses of environmental, endangered species, historical preservation, and military land use laws - analyses that “BLM, itself, said it had already completed or were unnecessary.”
“Any reasonable grounds for withdrawing this land expired long ago, and this renewed delay is entirely unjustified. Interior’s final decision in January to end those withdrawals was both appropriate and long overdue,” said Attorney General Treg Taylor.
The state’s lawsuit asks the federal district court in Alaska to prevent Interior from continuing to delay the January 2021 orders and to direct the department to lift the 16 withdrawals immediately.
- Petroleum News
AEA, AIDEA appointments Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced the appointment of 38 Alaskans to various state of Alaska boards and commissions on July 7, including the reappointment of John “Dana” Pruhs of Anchorage to both the Alaska Energy Authority and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority. The new terms are effective July 1 and run through July 1, 2023.
David Eisenberg of Anchorage was appointed by the governor to the Alaska Royalty Oil and Gas Development Board. His term will run from May 20, 2021, through June 30, 2025.
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