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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
January 2022

Vol. 27, No.3 Week of January 16, 2022

Oil patch insider: Narwhal output 1,600 bopd, GMT-2 at 10,000 boepd

Kay Cashman

Petroleum News

As we wait for the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission’s December production numbers to be released, we can see by their November numbers that although sustained production from Greater Mooses Tooth-2 in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska began Dec. 12, there were 18 days of production from GMT-2 starting in mid-November when operator ConocoPhillips Alaska began flowing back, cleaning up and testing a well.

In responding to GMT-2 startup questions from Petroleum News, on Jan. 10, ConocoPhillips Alaska’s media director Rebecca Boys said the company “began flowing back, cleaning up, and testing the MT7-06 well in mid-November. During the flowback and testing, the production was trucked to facilities. After the well was cleaned up and tested, sustained production to GMT-2 facilities began on December 12.”

“We are currently producing more than 10,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day,” Boys added. “Peak production is estimated at approximately 30,000 boepd.”

When asked how many wells are currently online, she said two producers.

Vincent Lelarge, North Slope development manager, ConocoPhillips Alaska, told the Resource Development Council’s annual conference on Nov. 17 that the company had initiated the production test of its first GMT-2 producer three days before and that early results were “really, really encouraging. The subsurface, the geology, the reservoir properties are at or better than expectations,” he said.

An Alpine satellite, GMT-2 production will be fed into the processing facility at ConocoPhillips’ Alpine field in the Colville River unit.

Narwhal next to Pikka

Another project connecting to Alpine’s processing facility that began sustained production in December was the 3,360 acre Narwhal participating area, which ConocoPhillips said went online Dec. 14.

Again, AOGCC production numbers have not yet been published for December, but Boys said the initial output rate was around 1,600 barrels of oil per day.

On the southeast edge of the Colville River unit where ConocoPhillips drilled the Putu 2 and Putu 2A wells, Narwhal is adjacent to the Pikka unit, where Santos (formerly Oil Search) and Repsol are working to develop the Nanushuk reservoir in the Brookian sand.

ConocoPhillips said in its PA application that Narwhal is a Brookian Nanushuk sand.

In its application ConocoPhillips also said initial drilling and completion will be done from the CD4 pad some 4 miles southwest of the Alpine Central Processing Facility.

CD4, a satellite pad, was constructed in 2005 for Alpine, Nanuq and Kuparuk development.

The pad will be expanded beginning this winter for additional Narwhal well slots.

The CD4-595 and CD4-594 wells, drilled in 2018 and 2019, were Narwhal appraisal wells, ConocoPhillips said, drilled “to better understand the reservoir and to test the technical feasibility of extended reach drilling at shallow depth.”

The company said there was initial test production from CD4-595 and CD4-594 in 2019 and 2020.

Sustained unit production was expected to begin from CD4-595, ConocoPhillips said in its application. “Opportunity targets which could be completed within two years of the December 2021 commencement of sustained unit production include two Narwhal horizontal producers and two Narwhal horizontal injectors, any of which may be moved into the 2022-2023 rig schedule as rig optimization/utilization dictates,” ConocoPhillips said.

The company has said that a new drill site for Narwhal, CD8, will likely be added later this decade.

- KAY CASHMAN






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