State approves Kuparuk expansion

ERIC LIDJI

For Petroleum News

The state has agreed to expand the Kuparuk River unit.

The expansion adds lease ADL 392364 into the unit boundaries, expanding the total size of the North Slope unit by some 2,560 acres. Earlier this year, operator ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc. asked the state to expand the unit and two participating areas within the unit to better incorporate several recent discoveries and developments. The applications to expand the participating areas are still pending with the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas.

One of those pending applications is intricately bound with the recently approved unit expansion. It would add portions of 11 tracts (including ADL 392364) covering some 11,900 acres to the Kuparuk participating area in the vicinity of drill sites 2F and 2G.

The current unit expansion would better incorporate four wells - 2E-01, 2F-21, 2F-22, and 2G-17L1 - currently producing from the Kuparuk River formation on a tract basis.

ConocoPhillips drilled the horizontal 2G-17L1 lateral in 2013 using coil tubing drilling on ADL 392364, just south of the unit boundaries. The well targeted the historically under-performing Kuparuk C sand and initially produced more than 2,900 barrels per day before settling to a sustained rate of 700 to 800 barrels per day. Given the success of the well, the company drilled the offsetting 2F-22 horizontal well at the western edge of the lease in late 2014 and initially produced more than 2,000 bpd before settling to some 1,100 bpd, also from the Kuparuk C. The company drilled the 2E-01 and 2F-21 horizontal wells earlier this year into the lowermost Kuparuk A sand. The former came online at nearly 1,000 bpd and is now producing some 300 bpd. The latter is an offsetting injection well that is currently being “pre-produced” at a rate of some 100 to 200 bpd.

With more than 2,000 barrels per day currently being sent to the Kuparuk River unit facilities from those four wells, the state believes the requested expansion is justified.