Total reducing Anchorage staff, Bergeron leaving Alaska

Total E&P USA said July 1 that Jack Bergeron, Alaska manager for Total, will leave Alaska, relocating to Houston by Aug. 1.

The company’s Houston-based communications manager, Jenna Wright, told Petroleum News that Total’s “Anchorage-based personnel will be reduced to one full-time and one part-time representative as Alaskan operations move from the drilling stage to an evaluation and planning period.”

Remaining staff are George Snodgrass, Total’s health, safety and environmental advisor, and Office Manager Lianne Hopper.

Total drilled the Caribou 26-11 No. 1 well in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska last winter.

Wright said Total currently “has no plans to conduct drilling this winter. The company is focusing on the evaluation of data gained from the first well and developing plans for its remaining” Alaska acreage, she said, and most of that work “can be managed from the headquarters office in Houston.”

Bergeron will relocate to Houston by Aug. 1, she said. Other Total employees in Alaska “had worked the North Slope project on a temporary basis and were previously re-assigned within the company.”

Total acquired its NPR-A acreage in 2002, paying $53 million for 20 tracts.

Total and partner Fortuna Energy Inc., a subsidiary of Calgary-based Talisman Energy, drilled the Caribou 26-11 with Nabors Alaska 14E rig some 80-plus miles from the nearest road, near the vicinity of the old Inigok test well, where there is a 5,000-foot gravel runway.

The well was spud Jan. 29 and work was completed Feb. 25. The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission said the vertical hole was drilled to 9,362 feet.