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ARCO’S Alpine field development 85 percent complete, final push this winter Development drilling under way with 12 wells drilled; sea-ice road will move modules, perhaps also tundra route for moving drilling supplies Kristen Nelson PNA News Editor
Ryan Lance, western North Slope vice president for ARCO Alaska Inc., told the Alaska Support Industry Alliance Oct. 22 that the company’s new Alpine field development on the western North Slope is “over 85 percent complete and we’re on target for a mid-2000 start up.”
Modules were sea lifted up in August, Lance said, and were placed on the Slope in the Kuparuk area.
“We’re waiting for freezeup and tundra travel so we can build our ice roads out to Alpine. We’ll be moving all of those modules out to Alpine this winter.”
Lance said that there will definitely be a sea-ice road, required for the modules, and there may or may not be a second ice road across the tundra.
“It will be a sea-ice route; we’re uncertain right now whether we’ll need the land route; we’re still evaluating that,” he said. “If we can get enough traffic to move on the sea-ice route, light trucks and big modules, we’d like to just stick with that. But it may just not be a safe environment for us to have all that activity on that sea-ice route so we may have to build a land route also.”
In addition to moving modules out to Alpine, Lance said, the company also has to resupply the drilling operation and move construction materials.
“That whole restocking operation will occur this winter. So there’s a lot of activity that goes on, on those ice roads. So we’ve just got to make sure we can handle it in a safe sort of fashion.”
Slowdown in work Asked about a recent layoff of 130 Alaska Petroleum Contractors employees at Alpine, Lance said “We’ve been asked a lot of questions — what are we doing, is the merger (pending acquisition of ARCO by BP Amoco) impacting it?
“The merger is not impacting anything that we’re doing,” he said.
“We’re moving ahead, full-steam ahead. We’ve invested a significant amount of dollars and the absolute worst thing we could do at this point in time is start trying to delay the project.”
ARCO Alaska spokeswoman Dawn Patience told PNA Oct. 21 that “the decision was made last week that these folks weren’t working at peak efficiency and that some materials hadn’t arrived.”
The layoffs “can’t really be tied to any one event,” Patience said. Alpine is a one billion dollar project, she said, and “sometimes you have to step back and make sure everything is running as smoothly as possible.”
Patience said both development drilling and pad work are continuing at Alpine and that the big push for winter work would be in January.
APC does general construction work at Alpine and is one of the five Alpine Alliance contractors.
Nearly 300 people today The Alpine work force on the Slope is currently nearly 300 people, Lance said.
“We’ll be ramping up to significantly more than that through the end of this year and into the first part of next year. So we have a big push on.”
“We’re rounding third and heading for home on the Alpine project…. another ramp up this winter as we try to put all those modules on site… and get ready to start up,” Lance said.
Doyon Drilling is doing the development drilling at Alpine.
“To date we have 12 wells drilled in the field. We hope to have on the order of 16 to 18 wells drilled by mid-year next year and ready for start up,” Lance said.
Lance noted that ARCO has announced a new reserve estimate for Alpine, 429 million barrels, up from 365 barrels and a peak production rate of 80,000 barrels per day. The entire field will be developed with horizontal wells, he said, “Which to my knowledge is the first time anywhere in the world.”
Development plans at the field include miscible gas injection from start up, something relatively new to the North Slope, he said, where fields usually go to EOR after some years of production.
To date, Lance said, the development costs for Alpine are approaching $1.1 billion, including the EOR project and the 20-25 wells added to the original plan.
ARCO owns 78 percent of the Alpine field and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. owns 22 percent. Alpine will be the first field on the North Slope with production from Native-owned land as well as state-owned land, Lance said, so in addition to the state, Arctic Slope Regional Corp. and Kuukpik Village Corp. will also share in the royalties.
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