Explorers 2011: Alaska exploration on the rise

Marti Reeve

Petroleum News special publications director

Welcome to The Explorers, an annual magazine from Petroleum News.

This year the news is all good.

Last winter one exploration well was drilled on Alaska’s North Slope.

Earlier in October, I would have said there were more wells planned for the upcoming North Slope exploration season than ever before — 34 wells, as compared to the record 33 wells that were drilled in 1969, following the discovery of the giant Prudhoe Bay field.

But by the end of October, some drilling plans were in jeopardy.

Following are the companies that originally planned to drill between November of 2011 and November 2012, the maximum number of wells they were looking at, and the status of their drilling programs per information gathered by Petroleum News Publisher and Executive Editor Kay Cashman:

• Brooks Range Petroleum: 1 rig, 2 wells/on schedule.

• Great Bear Petroleum and Halliburton’s proof of concept programs: 1 rig, 8 wells/drilling startup could be delayed by permitting until spring.

• Linc Energy (Renaissance Umiat): 1 rig, 5 wells/company said Oct. 31, “Rigs are tight but we are making headway.”

• Pioneer: 1 rig, 2 wells/on schedule.

• Repsol: 5 rigs, 15 wells/on schedule but there’s an outside chance permitting challenges could delay part of the program until next winter.

• Savant 1 rig, 1 well/subject to rig availability, likely will be delayed until next winter.

• UltraStar: 1 rig, 1 well/subject to rig availability, likely will be delayed until next winter.

Cashman said if Repsol’s drilling program for this coming winter is reduced, then one or more of its rigs would presumably be available for other operators.

Cashman does not think the 1969 “North Slope/nearshore” drilling record will be broken this winter, but “next winter is another story. It is likely to be even more active,” she predicted, with Repsol leading the pack.

Equally exciting news comes from the Cook Inlet basin, with Apache Corp. and Escopeta Oil tied for first place in significance to the future of the region’s oil and gas development.

After years of trying, Escopeta brought a jack-up rig into Cook Inlet: The first since 1994, and a piece of equipment that is vital to drilling the largely unexplored offshore part of the basin. Escopeta is drilling Corsair, the first of four prospects in its upper Cook Inlet Kitchen Lights unit, expecting to ultimately discover another Kuparuk-sized field in one of its Kitchen prospects, as well as enough natural gas to supply Southcentral Alaska for decades.

And if plans of Buccaneer Energy work out, there will be a second jack-up rig in Cook Inlet next year.

Apache’s entry into the Cook Inlet basin about a year ago also has long-ranging, positive impacts for the region’s industry. It has more than 800,000 acres in the basin, where it is targeting oil.

After successfully testing wireless nodal seismic technology on and offshore in the basin, the independent recently kicked off a 3-year, 3-D seismic acquisition program across the entire basin, with plans to drill its first Cook Inlet exploration well in 2012.

Bob Swenson, director of Alaska’s Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, told Petroleum News that Apache’s successful testing of the relatively new nodal technology in Cook Inlet was “going to be a game changer” for the basin.

Apache said the technology’s high quality data, combined with the cable-free recording nodes ability to get accurate imaging from the transition areas between land and sea, where there is strong tidal action, AND its ability to acquire images of structural and stratigraphic features at depths of up to 20,000 feet across all of the three defined target areas, were key to discovering and delineating new plays in the Southcentral Alaska basin.

Good times ahead…