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Conoco asks regulators for metering waiver Greater Mooses Tooth unit won’t have own production facilities; company requests custody transfer metering at Colville River unit KRISTEN NELSON Petroleum News
Hydrocarbons produced at ConocoPhillips Alaska’s proposed Greater Mooses Tooth 1 development in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska will not be processed at the unit, but instead shipped to the Alpine Central Processing Facilities. GMT1, the first drill site in the unit, will be 14 miles west of the Alpine facilities at the Colville River unit. Processing of crude oil off unit only occurs at one other development on Alaska’s North Slope - Oooguruk oil is shipped to the Kuparuk River unit for processing.
Because processing would not be done at the unit, metering exceptions are required. At Oooguruk those were from the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. At GMT1, because it is in NPR-A, metering exceptions are required from both AOGCC and the federal Bureau of Land Management, which manages NPR-A.
AOGCC heard metering waiver requests from ConocoPhillips Alaska at a May 3 hearing in Anchorage.
ConocoPhillips Alaska has applied for a waiver from commission regulations to allow for final custody transfer metering of hydrocarbons sold from the GMT1 to occur off unit and for the final custody transfer metering of gas sold from the Colville River unit to GMT1 to occur after the gas is severed from the Colville River unit.
At the May 3 hearing attorney Jon Goltz of ConocoPhillips told Commissioners Cathy Foerster and Dan Seamount that the arrangement was similar to that at Oooguruk, which also lacks its own production facilities.
Crude oil from Oooguruk is processed at the Kuparuk River unit. According to regulatory approvals the commission issued for Oooguruk it granted approval for the use of multiphase meters for well testing and production allocation within the Oooguruk unit and the use of multiphase meters to allocate production between Oooguruk and Kuparuk.
Goltz told the commission that GMT1 is a modest development which wouldn’t on its own support production facilities. Because GMT is a federally administered unit, ConocoPhillips is working with both AOGCC and BLM for approval of the metering issues, he said. Separation, recombination Brandon Viator, project integration manager for GMT, said the proposed measurement design evolved through multiple discussions with stakeholders, including both state and federal agencies, and said the proposal allows a high level of measurement accuracy within a cost that allows GMT1 to remain viable.
Oil, gas and water would be separated and measured at GMT1 in a three-phase separator, recombined and then sent to Alpine. GMT1 production would be combined with production from the CD5 pad prior to reaching the Alpine Central Facility at the Colville River unit for processing, where they would be processed along with Colville River unit hydrocarbons, and the sales grade crude oil sold down the Alpine pipeline.
Water will be returned to GMT1 for injection. Fuel gas and lift gas would go from Alpine to GMT1 in one line and miscible injection gas would be sent in a second line. The gas streams would be measured at GMT1 and the water measured at the wellhead at GMT1. Commission questions Commissioner Dan Seamount asked Viator if the same approval would be requested when the Bear Tooth unit was developed. Bear Tooth is the ConocoPhillips NPR-A unit west of GMT. Viator said he couldn’t say - that not enough work had been done at Bear Tooth.
Seamount also asked about a four-year delay which had been discussed if the proposed metering method were not approved, and Viator said GMT1 wouldn’t proceed if agencies required production facilities at GMT. The four years, he said, was a reference to going back to the engineering phase and re-permitting the project, going back to the environmental impact statement.
Seamount then asked if ConocoPhillips would give up on the project if production facilities were required at GMT1 and Viator said yes. Gas measurement Commission Chair Cathy Foerster asked why gas was measured at GMT1 rather than at Alpine. Viator said the last T in the gas line was at CD5, which was a possible location for a meter, but because space was not planned for another module at CD5, it would be much simpler to have it in the design at GMT1. He said there would be no difference in accuracy.
Metering is an issue because GMT and CRU are separate units.
Foerster asked if ConocoPhillips had considered combining the two into one unit. Viator said the decision to have separate units was already made by the time the metering decision was made, and said, in response to a further question from Foerster, that he didn’t know why the separate unit decision was made. She asked for background on that decision.
Foerster said the commission had required more economic analysis for Oooguruk and said the commission would keep the record open for answers to a number of questions, including a more detailed economic analysis, which she said would be treated as confidential.
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