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BP Alaska to conduct groundwork for possible Liberty development
BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. is preparing for its second consecutive season of geotechnical drilling in the vicinity of its Liberty oil discovery offshore the North Slope, east of the Endicott field.
Geotechnical drilling doesn’t seek to find oil and gas. Rather, it is something done in advance of a construction project.
Whether BP will actually construct an oil development at Liberty remains to be seen. The company in 2012 experienced a serious setback when it was forced to drop an ambitious plan to tap the offshore reservoir from shore with ultra extended-reach drilling.
BP drilled and tested the Liberty No. 1 discovery well in early 1997. The company’s most recent publicly stated resource estimate for the Liberty field is “approximately 150 million barrels of recoverable, high-quality light oil.”
BP now favors building an artificial island in the Beaufort Sea to develop Liberty, with a subsea pipeline carrying the oil ashore.
The Interior Department has given the company until the end of 2014 to submit a new development and production plan for the federal leases in the Liberty unit. The regulators have cited 2020 as the goal for first oil.
On Dec. 18, BP submitted a request for approval of a winter geotechnical and seafloor investigation to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
BP plans a range of activities on land and on the frozen sea, with the work to begin in March and end in early May.
The program will involve drilling holes onshore to investigate potential sources of gravel that would be needed for construction.
Offshore, BP plans to drill numerous holes to gather soil information for “possible future offshore pad locations,” and for evaluating pipeline routes, the company’s submittal to BOEM says.
A field team will drill about 40 geotechnical boreholes from the sea ice to depths of about 100 feet below the seafloor, BP’s plan of operations says.
The geotechnical investigation area covers both federal and state waters.
Surveying the seafloor For the seafloor investigation, BP proposes dropping a camera or a remotely operated vehicle through holes augured in the ice to capture video images of features such as rock or kelp cover.
“About 40 locations will be drilled,” BP says, adding the total number of sites examined will depend on weather and sea ice conditions.
BP completed a similar program of geotechnical investigations in early 2013, BP Alaska spokeswoman Dawn Patience told Petroleum News.
The company this year plans to monitor the ice pack, in light of horizontal movement of the land-fast ice formation seen in Foggy Island Bay during the 2013 geotechnical program.
“This year’s program will characterize the extent of surficial movement of the ice pack,” BP’s plan of operations says. Up to four remote sensors mounted on steel poles will be installed in the ice pack.
The geotechnical investigation presents certain challenges unique to the Arctic.
Crews will use forward-looking infrared radar, or FLIR, to look for denning polar bears prior to work activities. A trained bear guard will be employed.
Workers also must take care to avoid seal lairs and breathing holes.
—Wesley Loy
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