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Pioneer applies to develop new pad at Gwydyr Bay Independent proposing to drill five to 12 production wells from pad Kristen Nelson Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief
Pioneer Natural Resources Alaska has applied to the state of Alaska to construct and operate onshore oil and gas production facilities just north of the Prudhoe Bay unit at Gwydyr Bay. Both BP Exploration (Alaska) and ARCO Alaska have drilled in this area, Pioneer said in applications for the work, which includes a four-acre gravel pad and a 2.8-mile gravel access road to a site some three miles north of T Pad in the Prudhoe Bay unit in the vicinity of BP’s Pete’s Wicked No. 1 exploration well.
Produced fluids would be transported by a gathering pipeline system and processed at an existing Prudhoe Bay facility.
Pioneer acquired the leases in the state’s 2003 North Slope and Beaufort Sea areawide lease sales.
“The Gwydyr Bay area contains relatively small isolated hydrocarbon accumulations” discovered during exploration by BP Exploration (Alaska) and ARCO Alaska, Pioneer told the state. “These oil fields have not previously been developed due to their relative isolation and size.”
However, Pioneer noted, these small fields at Gwydyr Bay are “in very close proximity to existing Prudhoe Bay infrastructure and the very large, but mature, oil fields of the North Slope.”
The hydrocarbon accumulations targeted at Gwydyr Bay “include multiple stratigraphic horizons that are distinct from the nearby Prudhoe Bay reservoir,” Pioneer said.
The company “proposes to utilize a simple design and cost structure to develop these outlying fields.” A six- to 12-month drilling program is planned with a conventional diesel-powered drilling rig, a coiled-tubing workover rig, waterflood and gas lift facilities. BP looked at developing area BP looked at developing its 1997 Pete’s Wicked discovery, a prospect which BP described as a small Sagavanirktok/Ivishak find. In 1998 BP said in a proposal to state agencies that the directional exploration well was plugged and abandoned “after the reserves were found too small to justify a conventional development” with a gravel road and pipeline on vertical support members to T Pad in Prudhoe Bay.
BP considered development without a gravel pad, with three 10-12 foot diameter well cellar/house combinations and flexible pipe to move the oil. BP told the state such pipe has been in common use in the Gulf of Mexico since the 1980s, and said flexible pipelines with high-density polyethylene liners have been used on the North Slope at two Prudhoe Bay drill sites “for well tie-in lines for the past three years and have worked well in the Arctic.”
BP was looking at a four-inch diameter line for the Pete’s Wicked development, a diameter available in one-mile continuous lengths, requiring only three or four joints. After depletion of the accumulation, BP said, the line could be spooled and reused in other applications. Part of the line would have been placed directly on the tundra, and part, though a critical caribou crossing area, would have been raised on seven-foot vertical support members. In other areas BP proposed raising the line one foot above the tundra on plastic or wooden blocks to allow drainage and movement by flightless molting waterfowl, shorebirds or broods.
BP also considered a second Pete’s Wicked exploration well, but neither the second well nor the development occurred, and both surface and bottomhole leases at Pete’s Wicked were acquired by Pioneer last year. Production planned for 2006 Pioneer plans an ice road this winter to mobilize a drilling rig and another ice road in the winter of 2005-06 to demobilize the rig. The company said pre-start-up development drilling would begin as soon as practical after completion of the drilling pad and drilling and workover operations would continue intermittently during field life. Five to 12 production wells are planned.
The gravel road, drilling pad and pipelines would be constructed in 2005.
There will be three pipelines, buried in the gravel road to T Pad and then on vertical support members from T Pad to F Pad, where production from the Gwydyr Bay pad would be combined with Prudhoe Bay unit production.
The three-phase production will be carried in an eight-inch pipeline; a four-inch water pipeline will run from T Pad to the new pad; and a three-inch diameter gas lift pipeline from F Pad to the new pad.
Production is expected to begin in the spring of 2006, with a 10 to 20 year production life.
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