EA includes Barrow to Puviaq route

Kristen Nelson, PNA editor-in-chief

When ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc. begins building a winter ice road this season it may be counting the miles from Barrow, not from road infrastructure around existing North Slope fields.

Two overland trail-ice road routes from Barrow to the company’s Puviaq prospect are discussed in the environmental assessment for the company’s Puviaq winter exploration program in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, completed in mid-December by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management. Other options include: from Pitt Point on the Beaufort Sea; via a sea ice road entering NPR-A from Harrison Bay; and from the main North Slope exploration area.

The Puviaq prospect is south of Smith Bay and will be the farthest west that current drilling has gone in NPR-A.

The EA, published in mid-December, doesn’t evaluate the different routes, but looks instead at alternatives of ice roads, packed snow trails or aircraft to reach Puviaq. BLM said it found no environmental difference between them: “No alternative presents a clear advantage over another,” the agency said.

The no-action alternative, however, “does not comply with terms of federal laws and policies and does not allow access to existing, valid leases in the NPR-A,” and this presents a net disadvantage.”

ConocoPhillips has stored a drilling rig in the Puviaq area on a temporary ice storage pad and is proposing a two-site, two-year program with multiple access options to allow operational flexibility. Up to two wells and two sidetracks would be drilled per pad. An insulated over-summer ice pad may be constructed for rig storage.

BLM said that the primary overland trail-ice road route from Barrow to Puviaq crosses lands owned by the Barrow village corporation, Ukpeagvik Inupiat Corp. An alternate overland trail route from Barrow to Puviaq crosses UIC and Arctic Slope Regional Corp. lands. BLM said ConocoPhillips “is in the process of finalizing agreements with UIC and ASRC that address access.”

The maximum length of new ice road would be approximately 68 miles from Barrow to the Puviaq sites, 54 miles on federal lands within the NPR-A and 14 miles on Native land within the NPR-A.