Drilling, permitting on track for 23-27 Slope exploration wells

On Feb. 14 Dan Seamount, a commissioner and chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, told the Alaska Senate Resources Committee he wanted to see more drilling permit applications from North Slope operators planning to drill exploration wells this winter.

At the time, only eight permits had been approved by AOGCC, but Petroleum News had reported 15 wells would be drilled in the winter drilling season, plus another 8-12 by Great Bear Petroleum, starting in May, for a total of 23-27 exploration wells this year. (Great Bear is the only explorer that can drill year-round from gravel versus ice pads because of the location of its proposed wells along the Dalton Highway in an existing transportation corridor.)

By statute, AOGCC can’t reveal pending drilling applications, but Seamount wouldn’t have expressed concern if the agency had more permit applications in hand.

Since his testimony in front of Senate Resources, two more drilling permits have been approved and more applications have come in, Seamount said.

“This exploration season is looking pretty good. Hopefully we will get a few more. I plan to inform Senate Resources today about the two approved wells and about a few more we can’t identify because they haven’t been processed,” he told Petroleum News in a Feb. 15 email.

AOGCC drilling permits are often the last permits applied for because other authorizations and permits have to be in place first and because they are rig-specific, which might be why Great Bear does not have its 8-12 drilling permit applications into the agency.

Here is the status of the rest of this year’s explorations wells:

Approved by AOGCC as of Feb. 15:

1. Repsol, Qugruk 4

2. Repsol, Qugruk 4a

3. Repsol, Kachemach 1

4. Repsol, Qugruk 1

5. Repsol, Qugruk 2

6. Repsol, Qugruk 2a

7. Brooks Range Petroleum, Mustang 1

8. ConocoPhillips, Shark Tooth 1

9. Pioneer Natural Resources, Nuna 1

10. Pioneer Natural Resources, Sikumi 1

Permit pending, committed to drill:

11. Savant applied for its Red Wolf permit the week ending Feb. 10.

12. Brooks Range has its Mustang 2 application ready (currently drilling Mustang 1), but company officials would like to “see Mustang 1 sand” before they submit it, because it might “require a sidetrack off of #1 as #1A,” per company executive Bart Armfield. “We would expect approval within a week on #2 as it is a duplication of #1, not many program changes,” Armfield said in a Feb. 15 email to Petroleum News.

13, 14, 15. Repsol has six permits approved, but should have three more applications in. (AOGCC can’t specifically say and Repsol was too busy to query because of its gas kick in the Qugruk 2 well (see story on page 13 of this issue).

Stay tuned.

—Kay Cashman