|
BP, Hilcorp permit facilities expansions
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. has applied to expand H Pad at Prudhoe Bay and Hilcorp Alaska LLC has applied to re-route a flowline and place gravel for a tie-in pad and access road at Milne Point.
Notices of the work were posted Aug. 29 by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Division of Oil and Gas. Comments on the proposals are due by 4:30 p.m., Sept. 29.
The BP proposal is to place gravel fill to expand H Pad in the Prudhoe Bay unit by half an acre. The company said equipment would work from the existing pad.
BP said the project would provide “access for safely maneuvering larger drilling rigs to access wells on the drilling pad,” and said the expansion is necessary to maintain ongoing oil and gas production. The expansion will allow for larger drilling rigs currently in use at Prudhoe, the company said, with some 7,400 cubic yards of gravel from permitted sources to be used in the expansion.
The company said the project is scheduled to begin this December and conclude in December 2022 and said it would minimize fill “by only completing pad expansions on a well by well incremental basis.”
Moose Pad The Hilcorp application is for work at Milne Point which would re-route an existing flowline and place 1.002 acres of gravel for a tie-in pad and access road. Hilcorp said development of the Schrader Bluff reservoir at Moose Pad will require two new flowlines to transport production fluids to the central facilities pad. The company said that because of increased production within Milne Point, produced fluids from the F and L pads would be “routed to Moose Pad for primary separation in a new flowline,” and the fluids would then be transported to the central facilities pad through a second new flowline.
Hilcorp said both flowlines would be installed on a single pipe rack from Moose Pad to the existing pipe rack that connects the F and L pads to the central facilities pad.
The company said the Moose Pad development project will provide access to some 7 square miles of undeveloped oil reserves within the Milne Point unit, and will involve construction of a gravel pad and access road.
The project began with season one ice road construction in December 2016, followed by gravel mining and placement from mid-December 2016 through the end of March 2017. Gravel turning and compaction at the Moose Pad access road and tie-in pad and culvert placement were scheduled for July and August, with power and fiber installation and associated trenching from July through the end of October.
Late summer supplemental gravel work at the flowline tie-in pad and Spine Road widening for flowline crossing are scheduled from Sept. 25 through Oct. 31, with second season ice road construction beginning in December and running through January. Pipeline installation is scheduled to begin in mid-December and run through April, with facility installation beginning in May and running through the end of September 2018, with the drilling program scheduled to begin in September 2018.
| 