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Ultrastar identifies North Slope prospect Company plans to drill once it has negotiated access to existing drilling and production facilities at Point McIntyre and Lisburne Alan Bailey Petroleum News Staff Writer
Ultrastar Petroleum LLC has identified a new oil prospect west of Point McIntyre on Alaska’s North Slope, Jim Weeks told Petroleum News on Aug. 23. Weeks is a managing member of Ultrastar and sister company Winstar Petroleum LLC.
“We see potential at several levels — the Kuparuk level and the Sag/Ivishak level,” Weeks said. “We think we can drill it from Point McIntyre No. 1 drill site with a deviated well.”
Although the prospect shows good potential, the oil accumulations are likely to be modest in size — the drilling isn’t going to find 100 million barrels, Weeks said.
Some additional 3-D seismic data that Ultrastar obtained from the Prudhoe Bay Unit owners proved to be a key to finding the prospect. The additional seismic increased the coverage from eight square miles to 23 square miles, a critical factor in tying seismic times to depths under the permafrost.
“Eight square miles wasn’t really enough to tie the seismic into existing wells,” Weeks said. “We were fortunate that the PBU owners were willing to license us a bigger area …We got that, had it analyzed and we do have a prospect that we’re anxious to evaluate with a drill bit.”
Ultrastar would like to drill during the coming winter but delayed negotiations regarding access to drilling and production facilities seem set to push the schedule back.
“They’re coming along — it’s just a question of priorities,” Weeks said. ARCO well Weeks said that the preferred drilling option is to re-enter and sidetrack a well that ARCO drilled in 1991. So Ultrastar has been trying to establish terms of access to that well bore, in addition to negotiating access to the Point McIntyre No 1 drill pad.
“If we can’t get access to the well we’re prepared to drill a separate well, but I think the surface location still needs to be on the Point McIntyre No. 1 drill pad,” Weeks said.
Use of the Point McIntyre drill pad and the associated permanent road infrastructure would greatly simplify the logistics of drilling, by avoiding the need for ice roads and an ice pad. However, BP does have a self-imposed restriction to only drill from the pad during the winter, when the Beaufort Sea is frozen over — the drill pad is on the coast, Weeks said.
In addition to drill pad access, Ultrastar will need to process oil from the prospect through the Lisburne production center. Weeks thinks that there is sufficient capacity at the Lisburne center to process Ultrastar oil but the company needs to agree on issues such as backout procedures with BP.
“We need to investigate access to Lisburne before we invest the kind of money that it’s going to take to look at this thing,” Weeks said. Leases near Badami and Liberty Ultrastar also owns some leases east of Prudhoe Bay, near the Badami and Liberty fields. The company is still having seismic from that area evaluated.
“We’ve probable spent $400,000 over there acquiring a 3D license, getting it evaluated, getting some older 2D data, getting it evaluated and it’s still under evaluation,” Weeks said.
However, any development in that area will be contingent upon reducing the tariff rates for the Badami pipeline by increasing throughput in the line, Weeks said. So, unless Ultrastar makes a huge find, viable tariffs will depend on fields such as Liberty or Point Thomson coming on stream.
“Anything there would have to be done in conjunction with BP’s Liberty (field),” he said.
Meantime, Weeks hopes that negotiations regarding the new prospect near Point McIntyre can speed up.
“It takes two to tango,” he said.
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