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Final checkout under way at Alpine Phillips Alaska will warm field’s oil system with diesel before first oil enters facilities; production will begin with a single well, ramp up slowly Kristen Nelson PNA News Editor
Production from the Alpine field is expected to reach 80,000 barrels per day by 2001, but when production begins later this year, it will start with a single well.
Martin Thurlow, Alpine project manager for field operator Phillips Alaska Inc., told PNA during a field tour Oct. 10, that “everything is basically built.”
“It’s a case of checking that things work the way they’re meant to — that they will control the flow, that the safety systems work, pressure containment works.”
Craig Dotson, Phillips’ Alpine resident construction manager, said construction work at the main pad was almost done.
“We have what we call welded pipe from here to the pipeline, so we’re welded out, we’re just finishing up what we call incomplete work lists which are minor items, we’re heavily involved in the functional checkout. We’re over 70 percent done checking it out. Basically what we’re doing, is we’re making sure everything works and everything is in the right order so that we can safely bring hydrocarbon into the plant.” Cold pipes will be preheated When they are ready to start production, Thurlow said, the first thing they have to deal with is the fact that it is winter on the North Slope and the facility is cold. The completed wells, he said, are ready to go, with piping 7,000 feet into the reservoir and with well-head valve controls in place on top.
But the oil pipeline system which takes crude oil from the wells into the facility for processing (separation of oil and gas) at the Alpine pad is cold, Thurlow said.
“So what they’re going to do, is they’re going to fill the whole oil system with diesel. Diesel comes in from Kuparuk. And they’re going to circulate it round and round in circles through the heaters to bring it up to … some temperature. So it’s warm.”
Once the diesel circulating through the Alpine oil system is up to temperature, it will be pumped out toward Kuparuk, Thurlow said.
“So the first thing that goes out will be the diesel, the hot diesel. And what will come in behind it from the wells, from the first well, will be the crude oil from the well.” When production begins from that first well the gas separated from the oil will go to the flare and be burned.
“And then once we’ve got enough gas, and we’ve got the oil system standardized, then we’ll …start up the compression train. So it’s a sequential thing. You can’t commission the compression train until you’ve got some gas,” Thurlow said. Process needs to be stabilized So startup is sequential — first warming the oil system with diesel, then beginning production with one well and gradually bringing on more wells.
“You just don’t press a button and it all goes,” Thurlow said. “It’s sequential. And it will take a few weeks. It’s not something that happens overnight, either.”
Once the compression train is online, gas injection will start with one well.
Initially, Thurlow said, the field will be stabilized at some level of production, perhaps 20,000-30,000 barrels a day, which provides enough gas to run the field and get the compression system going. How many wells that will be, you won’t know until you see how well they produce, he said. The oil produces gas at a rate of about 1,000 standard cubic feet per barrel, and the field needs about 10 million standard cubic feet a day as fuel.
“So if you had 5,000 barrel-a-day wells, two of them would give us enough gas to run the fuel and three of them would give us some surplus gas to put out to flare. The thing is, will they run at five? I don’t know. You might get one that runs at less and one runs at way more. So depending which wells and depending how many they do, depends how many they will bring on.”
Production will be stabilized at some rate which provides enough gas for fuel, probably in the 20,000-30,000 barrel a day range, “and until we’ve got compression running, we’ll hold there.” Checkout work under way Once the field is in full production, about 80,000 barrels a day sometime in 2001, “we’re talking about 80-100 million cubic feet a day of gas,” Thurlow said. About 10 million cubic feet will be burned as fuel and about 90 million cubic feet will be reinjected.
In the control room at the field, Thurlow said checkout and automation work was continuing. There were more than a dozen people working in the room, but facility operator Gary Haught said that once the field is online — under normal operations — there will be four operators on days and three on nights.
Thurlow said that work in the control room in mid-October involved checking that when controls are used in the control room, that the appropriate actions take place in the field and that the right data is coming into the control room, “when there’s a reading in the field of pressure or temperature, that it displays in here that it’s accurate.”
Everything at the Alpine pad is operated from the control room, Thurlow said: “It’s everything at the Alpine pad, and will be everything at the second drill site and will also display information from the receiving end of the pipelines at Kuparuk, even though that’s operated at the other end.”
The field is now running on fuel gas which started coming over from Kuparuk in September, Thurlow said. Second pad next Craig Dotson, Phillips Alaska resident construction manager at Alpine, said there were close to 600 people working construction at Alpine. The second Alpine pad, some three miles away, is next, he said.
“We’re going to take a break between Thanksgiving and Christmas and the New Year’s, give everybody a breather, and then we’re going to come back hard at it probably the first part of February, once they get the ice road in we’ll start gearing back up.”
Gravel is down for the second drill pad and the road between the it and the main paid. Work which remains to be done includes the bridge between the two:
“Right now we have a temporary deck across the bridge,” Dotson said.
“We have to finish the construction on the bridge deck. We have to put the pipelines in. We have the fiber optic cable, the electric power cable that goes out there and then the modules go out there and then we interconnect.”
Dotson said the oil is brought back from the second drill site for processing at the main Alpine pad: “It’s just like a Prudhoe drill site or a Kuparuk drill site, the oil’s going to come back to the central facility.”
Six modules and piping for the second drill site will come in by ice road. “I hope to go west” Work at the second drill pad will start in February. Dotson said he expects that 350 to 400 people will be working out there next year, and that the job will wrap up in the middle of next year, probably in July.
“West. I hope. I hope to go west, next,” Dotson said when asked where next. This winter Phillips will be in its second year of exploration in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska west of Alpine.
Phillips Alaska (78 percent ownership) and partner Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (22 percent) are spending about $1 billion to bring the 429 million barrel of reserves (800 million to 1 billion barrels of oil in place) on line.
As of Oct. 10, 27 of a projected 112 wells had been drilled, a combination of production and injection wells, as gas will be injected back into the reservoir as soon as there is enough gas from the field to power the compression system.
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