Alternatives to Alpine satellite project proposed

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief

State and federal agencies have completed the draft environmental impact statement for ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Alpine satellite project on Alaska’s North Slope, and have proposed alternatives for public comment which range from roadless development to connecting all of the proposed new drilling pads by road.

The draft EIS, released by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, the lead agency for the EIS, also includes a full field development analysis for the 890,000 acre project area, representing what BLM calls “hypothetical scenarios that could occur during the next 20 years.” (See map, pages 12 and 13.)

The EIS looks at five alternatives, Jim Ducker, BLM environmental program analyst, who is managing the EIS for BLM, told Petroleum News Jan. 13. In addition to ConocoPhillips Alaska’s proposal, it looks at an alternative “in accordance with the Northeast NPR-A EIS,” an alternative with no roads to the new pads, one with roads to all of the five pads, and the no-action alternative — no new development. (See sidebar on alternatives in draft EIS.)

The draft EIS will be available online Jan. 16 at www.ak.blm.gov and the 45-day public comment period runs through March 1.

Hypothetical full-field development also studied

The full-field development analysis for the 890,000 acre project area represents hypothetical scenarios that could occur during the next 20 years. New production facilities — not just drilling pads — would be required if production occurred farther to the west than ConocoPhillips’ proposal, “because three-phase flow from the wells (the mixture of oil, water and gas which flows from the reservoir) is limited to a maximum distance of approximately 25 to 30 miles without processing and pump station support,” the agencies said in the EIS.

One reason the agencies included the hypothetical full-field development, Ducker said, is that other environmental impact statements “have been criticized for not looking out farther,” because once facilities are built, it makes it cheaper to do more development in an area. Previous documents have been criticized for not looking at what logically could come next.

“We were determined not to be in that situation,” he said.

There was some concern, he said, that an analysis of the hypothetical full-field development case would deny the public an opportunity to comment on further developments — a concern that the agencies would make all the decisions now.

“That’s not the case,” he said.

The decision this year will be only on the five pads ConocoPhillips is proposing now, CD-3 through CD-7.

For analysis only

Because the hypothetical pads were sited in a broad range of habitat areas, regulators could find that for future proposals they already have analysis that is analogous.

And mitigating measures, not useful for the five pads, might be useful for development farther west.

Ducker said the agencies included the hypothetical full-field development “for analysis purposes” only. Hypothetical drill sites do not indicate oil and gas discoveries, he said, but instead indicate “different sorts of habitat. We’re capturing birds here. We’re capturing caribou here. We’re capturing a polar bear den here … And so that the analysis will be as full, as robust as possible, covering as many of the resources that we know are there.”

In the hypothetical case, the agencies said in the draft EIS, they “identified hypothetical locations for 22 production pads and two pads that would have both processing facilities and production wells.

“The actual location and number of production pads and (processing facilities) that would be required to accomplish FFD are not known. The conceptual FFD portrayed and evaluated in this EIS is believed to overstate the anticipated FFD.”

The agencies said in the draft EIS said that ConocoPhillips Alaska has projected that its leases in the full-field development area “would not support more than a total of 12 production pads within the Plan Area, including existing CD-1 and CD-2 and the five proposed pads.”

Final EIS expected out in late June, early July

Each federal agency issues its own record of decision, as the agencies have different authorities. The EIS, however, is a joint document, and there will be one preferred alternative, “fashioned by multiple agencies,” which is the basis of decisions by all the agencies, Ducker said.

ConocoPhillips will submit permit applications for the project Jan. 16, Ducker said, and permits for the project are expected to be issued “very shortly” after the record of decision.

First production could be in 2006

The agencies said in the draft EIS that the development would be phased, with the first commercial production from new pads in the Colville Delta in 2006. The first commercial production from the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska could occur in 2008.

Alpine has been in production since November 2000. There are two pads at the field. Discoveries have been announced north of the Alpine field at Fiord, south of the field at Nanuq and west of the field in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The five proposed new pads include activity on state and federal lands both in the existing Colville River unit and to the west of the unit.

ConocoPhillips Alaska spokeswoman Dawn Patience told Petroleum News Jan. 13 that the company is happy that the draft EIS is out, is pleased with the energy the agencies put into the draft and with the fact that they are “keeping with the schedule.”

ConocoPhillips supports alternative A, which is its original proposal for satellites in NPR-A and the Colville River unit.

But, Patience said, while ConocoPhillips is “excited about the potential of these satellites, a final decision (to go ahead) will be based on the EIS and permit outcome — and we also have work to do to improve the economics of these opportunities.”

And the EIS alternatives are…

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News editor-in-chief

“The alternatives we chose address specific concerns raised during the scoping period and through our consultations with tribal governments and North Slope governing bodies,” BLM Alaska State Director Henri Bisson said in a Jan. 12 statement.

The draft EIS does not recommend an alternative. That step will be taken as the cooperating agencies — BLM, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard and the state of Alaska — prepare the final EIS.

Jim Ducker, the BLM environmental program analyst who managed the project for BLM, told Petroleum News Jan. 13 that the preferred alternative in the final EIS “may well be different than alternative A, ConocoPhillips’ proposal.”

Alternative A proposes five satellite drilling pads, all tied back to the Alpine production facility, with four of the five satellites tied back to Alpine with roads and a road and pipeline crossing of the Nigliq Channel near existing Alpine facilities, CD-1 and CD-2.

Alternative B conforms with 1998 decision

So Alternative B, “in an abundance of caution,” specifies that there are no roads or pads within the three-mile setback, and requires that CD-6 move about a mile farther from Fish Creek, “and our geologist estimated that that would drop the production from CD-6 by 10 to 30 percent.” Alternative B also does not have a bridge road connection from the NPR-A side to non-BLM land, just a pipeline crossing.

Alternative C provides roads to all pads

The road goes so far south under this alternative, Ducker said, that it would hook up to Nuiqsut. Some Nuiqsut residents believe that with a road connection it would be easier to get jobs at Alpine or the new satellite sites.

There was also concern about aircraft noise, particularly at CD-3 in the northern part of the delta (the Fiord discovery) where ConocoPhillips proposes to reach the site by aircraft. It is an important bird habitat, Ducker said, so the agencies looked at what it would take put a road to CD-3. It’s an engineering challenge, he said, but the agencies analyzed putting a road in so that there would be less noise in the bird habitat.

Both alternatives C and D raise the pipeline from five feet to a minimum of seven feet at the vertical support members.

Alternative D: no road access

“Where C brackets us in roads everywhere, D brackets us the other way,” Ducker said.

Alternative E is the no-development alternative.

“It’s important for us to have a range. There’s an infinite number of alternatives, you can mix and match all these features,” Ducker said. “We’ve tried to get a range of alternatives that together, cumulatively, address all of what we think are viable, reasonable alternatives.

“And the preferred alternative may well be a mix and match of some of these.”