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State issues notice of proposed Yukon Flats exploration license
Alan Bailey for Petroleum News
Alaska's Division of Oil and Gas has issued a notice of intent to evaluate a proposed exploration license for state lands in the Yukon Flats area in the Alaska Interior. As is required under state law, the division is requesting any additional proposals for exploration in the region and is also requesting comments regarding potential exploration activities. At this stage of the process the state has not indicated what entity has applied for the license.
Oil and gas potential The Yukon Flats consist of an 11.1 million acre lowland area around the Yukon River, between the trans-Alaska oil pipeline and the Canadian border.
(See map in the online issue PDF)
Under the flats lies a geologic basin with oil and gas potential. In 2004 the U.S. Geological Survey published an assessment of the basin suggesting that there may be anywhere in the range of zero to nearly 600 million barrels of technically recoverable oil in the basin, with a mean of about 173 million barrels. The zero at the bottom end of the range reflects the fact that nobody has yet demonstrated the existence of recoverable oil in the basin. Natural gas resources could range from zero to nearly 15 trillion cubic feet. The hydrocarbon resources would be situated in relatively deep sub-basins within the overall basin.
Several years ago, an assessment by consultancy firm Petrotechnical Resources of Alaska indicated that there could be an oil field on the scale of the North Slope Alpine field somewhere in the basin.
Much of the land within the flats consists of the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, although Native village corporations own some of the surface land. Native regional corporation Doyon Limited owns some of the subsurface. According to a map published with the division's exploration license notice, the state land tends to lie around the perimeter of the basin.
Hilcorp exploration activities In recent years Hilcorp Alaska has been conducting some exploration in the basin, after entering an oil and gas exploration agreement with Doyon. In 2020 Hilcorp conducted an aerial gravity survey of the basin. The company appears to be particularly interested in the Birch Creek region in the central part of the basin -- in 2021 the company drilled 13 shallow stratigraphic test wells in a block of Doyon subsurface land around the villages of Birch Creek and Fort Yukon.
In May the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation approved Hilcorp's oil discharge prevention and contingency plan for the drilling of two exploration wells at locations 6A and 4A, northwest of the village of Birch Creek and about 30 miles southwest of Fort Yukon. Hilcorp had told ADEC that it anticipated starting the drilling operations this summer.
Preparations for drilling In its application to ADEC Hilcorp said that it had cleared and leveled the planned drilling sites and had helicopter landing zones in clearings near the sites. Rig mats would be used for stable working and transport surfaces. The company also said that it had overwintered a barge in close proximity to the project sites, to enable operational efficiency in the spring and beyond.
At the time of Petroleum News going to press, permits for the drilling of the two wells had not appeared on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission's website.
--ALAN BAILEY
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