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Exxon resumes Pt. Thomson drilling
ExxonMobil said March 12 that it has resumed drilling at Point Thomson on Alaska’s North Slope. The initial production system at Point Thomson is scheduled for startup in 2016, with an initial volume of 10,000 barrels per day of natural gas condensate.
ExxonMobil said winter construction continues with the opening of a 50-mile ice road from Deadhorse to the Point Thomson central pad. Point Thomson is on state acreage along the Beaufort Sea, 60 miles east of Prudhoe Bay and 60 miles west of the village of Kaktovik.
The most recent Point Thomson well permit by the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, in February, was for a service well.
Initial production will be from two injection wells, ExxonMobil said, which will work in tandem with a production well, cycling up to 200 million cubic feet of natural gas per day through a central processing facility at the field.
ExxonMobil is the field operator; other major working interest owners are BP and ConocoPhillips.
Drilling ExxonMobil discovered commercial quantities of oil at Point Thomson in 1975 and vast gas reserves in 1977, according to an Alaska Department of Natural Resources fact sheet on Point Thomson.
By 1983, ExxonMobil and other companies had drilled 17 wells at the field, DNR said.
Litigation over the unit began following a 2006 termination of the unit by the Murkowski administration for lack of putting the unit into production. Concurrent with litigation, DNR allowed ExxonMobil to drill two wells in 2009, conditioned upon commitment to put those leases into production.
A settlement agreement between the state and the Point Thomson unit owners was reached in 2012.
Since then, critical pieces of infrastructure have been constructed: housing; expansion of existing gravel pads; installation of a 22-mile pipeline connecting Point Thomson to Badami, which has an existing line connecting to the trans-Alaska oil pipeline; fuel tanks to support activities; a new airstrip; a service pier; and infield roads.
Point Thomson is estimated to hold 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and associated condensate, ExxonMobil said, with the natural gas representing 25 percent of known North Slope gas resources which “could be used to partially underpin the proposed Alaska LNG project.”
“Potential future development will depend on a range of factors such as business considerations, investment climate and the fiscal and regulatory environment,” the company said.
- Kristen Nelson
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