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Total’s Alaska chief: Company wants to grow in United States Company looks for oil in NPR-A, considers Alaska best spot to explore Kristen Nelson Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief
Total is in Alaska because the company wants to grow in the United States, the company's Alaska area manager, Jack Bergeron, told the Alaska Support Industry Alliance May 22.
Formerly known as TotalFinaElf, the company produces 2.4 million barrels a day of oil equivalent worldwide with most of its production and income from Europe — including the North Sea — and Africa, as well as the Middle East where it is the second largest producer among private companies.
One percent of Total’s income comes from North America, where the company has oil production in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico and primarily gas production along the Gulf Coast of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, Bergeron said.
“Why are we in Alaska? Because we want to grow in the United States and we're exploring heavily in the deepwater (Gulf of Mexico). We need some more growth,” he said.
Total's geological and geophysical teams in the United States looked at Alaska, and “consider Alaska to have one of the largest — if not the largest — potential for exploration in the whole world.”
And, he said, it's politically friendly.
“It's a wonderful place to be exploring for oil and gas,” he said.
And all of Total's predecessor companies, Total, PetroFina and Elf Aquitaine, “have been in Alaska at one time or another,” Bergeron said, although never as operators. Nabors 14-E rig selected Last summer the company leased 20 blocks totaling 229,000 acres in the northeast National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska for $53 million. It has since opened a small office in Anchorage.
“This winter we shot additional 2D and 3D seismic, it's being processed now,” he said.
Total is permitting three prospects, Caribou East, Caribou West and Fox.
“Our plans are to drill the first well next winter and drill a subsequent well the next winter to explore these prospects,” Bergeron said.
The Anchorage office is supported by a large geological and geophysical staff in Houston, which is working on the NPR-A prospects, he said.
Permitting work is under way, he said, and the company is contracting for a rig with Nabors Alaska Drilling.
“I don't know if the ink's all dry yet, but we do have a contract and I have a rig now, now we've got to find a place to put it,” he said.
The company will use Nabors rig 14-E, he said, a modular rig. The plan is to move it on rolligons, although the company is “still looking into Herc'ing the rig, or at least parts of it, or some the supplies —the stuff to get us started to make that (winter on-tundra) window as long as we can.”
In addition to the prospects, he said, Total has another block to the west “that we don't have a named prospect on yet, but hopefully by the seismic we shot we'll come up with one.”
Bergeron said the company's prospects in NPR-A are all oil prospects. While the company is about 85 percent gas in the United States, he said, worldwide Total is an oil company, about 65-70 percent oil.
The company is looking for oil in Alaska, he said, its prospects are oil prospects, “if we find gas we've got an interesting problem, as everybody else does.”
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