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Natchiq Technical Services builds E&P operational capability Company is staffed to explore and produce on the North Slope for leaseholders who do not want to handle their own operations in the Arctic Kay Cashman PNA Publisher
Natchiq Technical Services is positioning itself for an influx of independent oil and gas companies into Alaska, its president, David Johnston told PNA at a recent interview.
By building a team of individuals with North Slope experience and availing itself of sister company expertise, the Anchorage-based company is able to offer exploration and production services to oil and gas companies who want to drill on the North Slope but do not want to operate there.
“Natchiq Technical provides the support infrastructure and other services for independents wanting to operate exploration programs in Alaska,” Stu Gustafson, vice president of operations for Armstrong Resources LLC, told PNA Aug. 14.
Armstrong Resources, a Denver-based independent which bought its first Alaska oil and gas leases in October, filed permit applications July 19 to drill three wells between Kuparuk and Thetis Island. Natchiq Technical will be Armstrong’s operator on the North Slope. (See story on the front page of the July 28 edition of PNA.) It will oversee planning, engineering and implementation of Armstrong’s 2002-2003 exploration plan, including well testing and selection of a company to build 10 miles of ice road.
“Natchiq Technical has experienced people who are cognizant of how a program needs to be conducted, what needs to be done, when it needs to be done and where to obtain all of the services needed for safe, efficient operations. They can greatly enhance a company’s local engineering, purchasing and logistics capabilities in Alaska,” Gustafson said.
E&P expertise “We have expertise in all areas of E&P,” Natchiq Technical Vice President John Lewis told PNA in a recent interview. Lewis has more than 28 years of international oil industry experience, including management, marketing and product development. Most recently he worked at Fairweather E&P Services in Anchorage; prior to that he was with BBL Brit Bit Ltd. in Aberdeen, Scotland.
“Natchiq Technical provides technical consulting and management in drilling, completion and stimulation, well testing, facility engineering and design, production, and geology and geophysics. … We can handle parts of a project or we can do everything,” Lewis says.
Some of the services will come directly from Natchiq Technical and some from its sister companies in Natchiq Inc., such as Houston Contracting which does pipeline maintenance and construction, building trade construction and equipment maintenance. Houston got its start in Alaska in the early days of Prudhoe Bay.
Another Natchiq subsidiary which Natchiq Technical works with on projects is APC Natchiq. It designs, fabricates, assembles and delivers oilfield modules and has built sealift-sized modules for both BP’s Northstar oil field and Phillips Alaska Inc.’s Alpine oil field development, as well as done turnkey truckable modules for ARCO Alaska Inc., Conoco, Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. and the Petro Star Valdez Refinery.
Roots in well fracturing Natchiq Technical got its start in Alaska with well fracturing, one of the services that is most challenging for oil companies who do not have Arctic E&P experience.
“The challenge with fracturing up on the North Slope is it’s high-perm fracturing. Typical fracturing, in the Lower 48, involves low permeability rock,” Johnston says.
Jim Abel, a former ARCO Alaska Inc. employee who heads up the well stimulation and fracturing group with Natchiq Technical, says, “That’s what fracturing was made for — low perm rock. We (ARCO Alaska) really had no historical analog when we came up here with respect to high perm fracturing. From an industry standpoint, this proved to be pioneering work. When I was with ARCO I was involved in the fracturing operations of all the major fields on the North Slope e.g. Prudhoe, Kuparuk, Point Mac, Tarn, Lisburne, West Sak, Milne Point, Schrader Bluff, and many exploration wells. We still consult on the exploration wells.”
“It took a coordinated effort between the pumping companies, operations, production, drilling, and facilities personnel to have a successful fracturing campaign. Many of the excellent engineers and operations personnel I worked with are still with BP or Phillips,” Abel says.
“Our role is to preserve the lessons learned and carry the baton to new engineers, new fields and new companies moving to the North Slope. We currently provide consulting for BP’s North Slope fracturing program,” he says.
High perm fracturing is pretty commonplace now in the Gulf of Mexico, Johnston says, but the vast majority of the work worldwide has been done in Alaska and” Jim’s been involved in the majority of that.”
Cutting down the time for well testing Another service that Natchiq Technical offers its customers is well testing. The company is particularly proud of two new mobile flow-test units designed specially for the Arctic by its well group business manager Dan Wuthrich and built by APC Natchiq.
The advantages of the new well testing units?
Johnston says they cut costs, reduce rig-up and rig-down time, shrink the environmental footprint and are safer than the modified Lower 48 flow-test units traditionally used on the North Slope for exploration testing.
One unit, the Millennium Test Separator, is built into one 80-ton, 70-foot trailer that can be pulled by a truck. The MTS is designed for in-field well testing and is currently being transported to Prudhoe Bay where it will work for BP.
The other, equipped with tanks to hold produced fluids and a flare stack for gas production, is designed for exploration wells. It involves three compact modules that can be flown into a drill site, driven in via ice roads or hauled by a rolligon.
A key feature of the MTS units is a heat exchange unit, which is attached to a 100 kilowatt generator that supplies power to the unit. The exchange unit warms and circulates fresh air, eliminating the need for external diesel heating units, thereby reducing rig-up and rig-down time and cutting air emissions by approximately one-third. (A boiler unit is used for additional heat in very cold weather.)
Johnston says the exploration flow-test unit is designed to reduce rig-up and rig-down time by more than 50 percent, representing a significant cost savings and the possibility for operators to test more wells during the North Slope’s short drilling season.
Why did Armstrong choose Natchiq Technical? “David Johnston, John Lewis, Jim Abel and their staff at Natchiq Technical have a firm grasp of operational and environmental hurdles for exploration and production operations in the Arctic,” Gustafson told PNA. “As part of a large family of companies under Arctic Slope Regional Corp., a resident stakeholder company, its parent company Natchiq also has an excellent Native hire record, which is important to us.”
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