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The Explorers 2019: North Slope, Cook Inlet exploration continues to pick up
Kay Cashman Petroleum News
To accommodate our production calendar, The Explorers is written during the first few months of the year, which also happens to be the period of heaviest exploration activity in Alaska, especially on the North Slope. This means new information is coming in as we send the magazine to production between April 4 and April 11, 2019, so readers should check with Petroleum News, our weekly newspaper, on the very latest news about the oil and gas companies featured herein.
Nonetheless, The Explorers magazine is a solid summary of the history of the explorers featured in it and an excellent barometer of what projects they are likely to pursue in the next year or more.
Criteria to be featured in this annual magazine We try to include every oil and gas company that either drilled an exploratory well in Alaska during the last year and expects to continue exploring, or has announced what we determine to be serious plans to explore in the coming year; the exception being companies such as Doyon, which is moving away from its own exploration (see Petroleum News April 21 or April 28, 2019, issue for an explanation).
We also decided this year to concentrate on Alaska’s two major oil provinces - the North Slope and Cook Inlet basin. Until another company does what Doyon did in Interior Alaska, which was make a serious effort to methodically explore (with several wells) an area that obviously has some oil and gas potential, we will stick to the two provinces that produce Alaska’s oil and gas.
Eleven companies qualify as explorers The following 11 oil and gas companies were eligible to be in The Explorers 2019: 88 Energy (subsidiaries Accumulate, Captivate, and Regenerate); ASRC; BlueCrest; ConocoPhillips, Eni; Furie; Glacier, Hilcorp; Jade; Oil Search and Pantheon.
We also included an article on BP’s in-field “exploration” at Prudhoe Bay.
Looking for new pockets of oil in Alaska’s producing legacy fields is something not only BP is undertaking, but ConocoPhillips is doing at Kuparuk River and Alpine, some of which is mentioned in the company’s feature in this edition.
Looking for missed, and therefor new, pools of oil on the North Slope has become a near religious exercise on the North Slope since Bill Armstrong entered Alaska in 2001. Armed with moneyed and like-minded partners, he began finding and developing sizable oil deposits that had been missed, or ignored, on the Slope, eventually launching a renaissance in North Slope exploration and development that now has the region classified by IHS Markit as a “late-emerging-phase super basin,” rather than a mature basin.
You can read more about Armstrong in the Oil Search feature, as well as in back issues of Petroleum News and its magazines, which are all available at no extra charge to paid subscribers in our online archive at www.petroleum news.com.
ConocoPhillips the most active explorer The most active explorer in the past year was, hands down, ConocoPhillips Alaska. The company promised six to eight North Slope exploration/appraisal wells in the 2018-19 winter drilling season and per the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and Petroleum News’ rig report, appears to have drilled seven wells, all classified as exploratory by AOGCC.
ConocoPhillips’ first major Nanushuk development at Willow, in what they’ve dubbed as the Narwhal trend, is expected to come online in 2024-25, right behind Armstrong partner Oil Search’s Nanushuk development at nearby Pikka in 2023. Both operators are building standalone processing facilities and associated infrastructure, as well as utilizing the partly empty existing North Slope oil infrastructure, to bring fields of at least 100,000 barrels of oil a day online - and both expect to develop several other discoveries in the future, involving hundreds of thousands of barrels of light, sweet crude.
Highlights from Alaska’s explorers Following are snippets of info from the explorers featured in this edition:
* 88 Energy looking to drill North Slope Icewine wells, while Yukon Gold excitement grows;
* ASRC Exploration pursuing Kuparuk C and Nanushuk intervals at Placer;
* BlueCrest advances exploration, development of Cosmopolitan in Cook Inlet basin with successful application of new fishbone well design;
* ConocoPhillips boosts capital spend in Alaska; drills into the enigmatic Cairn interval;
* Wildcats in Eni’s North Slope future? While CEO talks about stepping up exploration, fate of company’s first wildcat in Alaska in 11 years remains hush-hush;
* Development is Furie’s focus at Kitchen Lights, but also poking at one of Cook Inlet’s most intriguing exploration targets - oil in field’s deep Jurassic at 20,000-plus feet;
* Glacier Oil announces North Slope oil discovery, payout in less than 15 months, Starfish prospect one of several new promising pods in Killian sands, plus looking for partners to explore 50-100 million barrel Sabre oil prospect in Cook Inlet;
* Hilcorp aims to drill in lower Cook Inlet - despite delay in 3-D seismic survey lower CI, Iniskin Peninsula and Trading Bay exploration programs on track;
* Jade Energy cuts deal with Point Thomson operator ExxonMobil to drill old BP Sourdough oil discovery on eastern North Slope next to the ANWR 1002 area;
* Oil Search tackles largest Alaska discovery in decades, ahead 3 more Horseshoe wells, Grizzly prospect evaluation, new exploration block on eastern North Slope;
* London-based Pantheon Resources merges with Great Bear, says Alkaid discovery in Brookian bodes well for nearby Phecda prospect, looking for partners.
All in all, things are looking up for the oil industry in Alaska.
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