Petro-Canada will hold additional Alaska acreage

Larry Persily

Petroleum News Government Affairs Editor

The decision by Petro-Canada (Alaska) Inc. to add 28,800 acres to its already sizable Alaska lease holdings of 430,000 acres doesn’t mean the company is planning exploration drilling anytime soon. It’s just filling in some of the areas and adding to its prospects, a company official said.

“What we got supplements our existing acreage,” said Michelle Harries, spokeswoman for Calgary-based Petro-Canada, an oil and gas exploration, refining and marketing company.

The company has done field work in Alaska but no seismic work, and it has no plans for any drilling, Harries said May 24.

Petro-Canada was the only bidder in the state’s May 19 North Slope Foothills areawide sale, taking five tracts totaling 28,800 acres. The tracts are adjacent to the company’s existing acreage in the gas-prone area south of Prudhoe Bay. The bid of $5.37 per acre totaled $154,656 in bonuses to the state.

The company, with about 720 million cubic feet per day of natural gas production in Alberta and British Columbia, sees Alaska as a prospect for future development, Harries said. But first it needs to see a pipeline to move any gas it might find on the North Slope, she said. “We’d have to see a way to move the resources to market.”

Until then, the company is going to be guarded about spending money on exploration in Alaska, she said. “We’re cautious about committing large capital dollars.”

Petro-Canada’s current exploration program includes oil and gas prospects offshore of Canada’s East Coast, in the North Sea, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Syria and Libya, Harries said. In addition to Alaska, its future natural gas prospects include the Mackenzie Delta in Canada’s Northwest Territories and Nova Scotia.