ConocoPhillips wraps winter season work

Gravel in place at Fiord, Nanuq pads; three wells drilled over winter at Fiord; rig now back at Alpine, will drill later at Nanuq

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief

ConocoPhillips Alaska has wrapped up its winter exploratory and construction work.

The Bureau of Land Management closed the ice season May 5, company spokeswoman Dawn Patience told Petroleum News May 10.

Patience said ConocoPhillips completed two exploration wells at Kokoda in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, as well as the Iapetus well drilled from onshore to an offshore bottomhole on state and Native lands west of Fiord, an exploration tail drilled from an Alpine development well and some 500 square miles of three-dimensional seismic.

Rick Mott, ConocoPhillips Alaska’s vice president of exploration and land, said in January that what the company had planned was a fairly average exploration year. The Kokoda wells were at the end of a 70-mile ice road, “farther out than anyone has ventured with an ice road before,” Mott said. The Iapetus well, while fairly close to infrastructure, is also expensive because there is no road and it’s “tough to get a rig up here.” The ice pad for Iapetus was at the shoreline, “but the prospect straddles the onshore and offshore,” he said.

ConocoPhillips has not released any results for the wells, but Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission reports show the Iapetus well was completed March 28 at a measured depth of 9,300 feet and a true vertical depth of 7,986 feet; the well was plugged and abandoned. It was drilled from a surface location in section 8, township 12 north, range 4 east, Umiat Meridian, to a bottomhole in section 7, T12N, R4E, UM.

The commission also has completion data for two Kerr-McGee wells from this winter’s exploration season: The Tuvaaq State No. 1 was completed March 9 at a measured depth of 17,630 feet and a true vertical depth of 8,465 feet from a surface in section 24, T14N, R8E, UM, to a bottomhole in section 15, T14N, R8E, UM. Kerr-McGee’s Kigun No. 1 was completed March 30 at a measured depth of 9,098 feet and a true vertical depth of 9,001 feet with both surface and bottomhole in section 24, T14N, R8E, UM. Both offshore wells were plugged and abandoned.

Winter development work has also been completed at ConocoPhillips’ two new Alpine satellites, CD-3 (Fiord) and CD-4 (Nanuq).

Gravel hauling for CD-3 and CD-4 was completed, Patience said, along with construction of the gravel pad at CD-3, a roadless development, and vertical support members along the pipeline route.

The Doyon 19 rig, typically used at Alpine, was used to drill the Iapetus well and was then taken to Fiord where it drilled the first three development wells at the new gravel pad, two of them permitted as water injection wells. The rig was taken off the pad at Fiord on the winter ice road — there will be winter-only drilling at Fiord — and was moved back to CD-2, Patience said.

Gravel pad construction is under way at Nanuq, CD-4, south of Alpine. “We’ll continue work this summer” at CD-4, she said, because that pad is accessible by a gravel road from the main Alpine facilities. During the peak of the winter season there were 450 people employed, on the slope and in town, on the Fiord and Nanuq development.

John Whitehead, ConocoPhillips Alaska’s vice president for the western North Slope, told Petroleum News in December that some 40 wells will be drilled at Fiord and Nanuq. First production will be in late 2006 and combined production from the two satellites is expected to peak at 35,000 bpd in 2008. Combined Alpine, Fiord and Nanuq production is expected to peak at 135,000 bpd in late 2007.