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Positive oil news ConocoPhillips, Hilcorp, Santos brief House Resources on exploration & production
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
Drilling, development and more production were the highlights as Alaska's major oil and gas producers and the new entrant which will soon join them with production on the North Slope provided the Alaska Legislature's House Resources Committee with upbeat updates at a Jan. 28 hearing.
ConocoPhillips Alaska and Hilcorp are the state's major oil and gas producers, operating between them the majority of producing fields and production across the North Slope. Santos will be on its way to being the third-largest producer on the Slope when it brings the Pikka unit online in March.
ConocoPhillips and Santos work the North Slope; Hilcorp works both the Slope and Cook Inlet.
Santos The Santos presentation, 'Powering Alaska's next 50 years: delivering Pikka & beyond,' set the tone for remarks by Joe Balash, Santos senior vice president for external affairs and Pete Laliberte, Santos vice president of business development.
Santos is developing the Pikka field, discovered in 2013. Oil Search became the 51% working interest owner in 2017 in partnership with Repsol. Oil Search was acquired by Santos in 2021.
Phase 1 of Pikka development is 98% complete, Laliberte said, with first oil expected in the first quarter of this year, ramping up to 80,000 barrels of oil per day by the third quarter of the year. It's a $3 billion investment, including 120 miles of pipeline, a seawater treatment plant at Oliktok Point, 25 wells drilled to date ' with a total of 45 wells planned ' and production facility modules in place and undergoing commissioning.
The first phase will develop roughly 400 million barrels of oil, Laliberte said.
Laliberte also discussed marketing the oil.
Santos doesn't own transportation infrastructure other than its own pipeline, so it has flexibility in selling its oil ' on the U.S. West Coast or possibly in Asian markets ' allowing it to look for the best price, benefitting both Santos and the state.
Balash, who was previously in Alaska's Department of Natural Resources, said because Santos doesn't own major transportation infrastructure, it will be easier for the state to value oil for royalty calculation.
Santos believes Quokka and Horseshoe are of comparable size to Pikka, with a Quokka discovery made in 2020, and an appraisal well spud there Jan. 3 which the company hopes will provide enough information to proceed with the next stages of development there, Balash said. Another well at Horseshoe is planned in the winter of 2026-27, allowing for the continued growth of production from the area.
And there is growth planned at Pikka: One drill site is in operation and two others are permitted, but require additional investment, and the production facility will ultimately need to be expanded to handle up to 120,000 bpd.
ConocoPhillips ConocoPhillips Alaska's presentation, by Barry Romberg, vice president for commercial and midstream, and Colin Wolfe, vice president for finance, looked at five areas of the company's activity: core business stability, major projects and programs, generational investments, exploration and critical infrastructure.
Wolfe discussed the complexities of operating on the North Slope: Arctic conditions, the distance to market and logistics, subsurface uncertainty, oil price and state fiscals. The two largest variables impacting economics are fluctuations in price and subsurface risk, he said.
Core business stability requires investments to address the natural decline of fields and stabilize production, as well as ensuring that major equipment stays in good condition, including reservoir development, operating excellence and workovers to ensure wells continue to flow, stemming base decline.
Major projects are 'rate-adding projects,' Wolfe said, with four currently underway: Nuna, Coyote and Narwhal on the western North Slope and West Sak at Kuparuk. These projects can cost almost a billion dollars and require at least a few years to come to full production, he said, noting that since the passage of Senate Bill 21 ConocoPhillips has 'consistently spent about a billion dollars per year in this category.'
Willow is an example of a generational investment, Romberg said, with first oil expected in 2029, and has taken close to 25 years from initial exploration to where it is today. Kuparuk in the 1980s and Alpine in the early 2000s are other examples of generational investments, he said.
Willow is also a greenfield project ' there was no infrastructure in place, no road access, Romberg said. Work on fabrication and delivery of the Willow operations center took place in 2024-25, and Central Facility fabrication, delivery and commissioning began in 2024 and will continue through 2028, followed by pre-drilling from 2027-28 and complete tie-ins in 2028.
2025 work at Willow included construction at the Bear Tooth 1 drillsite so pre-drilling of wells can begin in 2027, Romberg said. During the 2025 winter construction season 12 modules were delivered to the Willow Operations Center and the Willow Construction Camp opened, enabling year-round construction. Willow Central Facility pad work to prepare for delivery of modules which are about 50% complete on the U.S. Gulf Coast and will travel up on the 2027 sealift.
The expected winter construction headcount at Willow is around 3,000, with 300 permanent jobs expected following startup.
Romberg said ConocoPhillips has four exploration wells and seismic planned for this winter. He said those wells aren't expected to add barrels anytime soon: That exploration in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska will be 'our children's future.'
The fifth area is infrastructure. Romberg said ConocoPhillips is the only Alaska oil company operating in every piece of the value chain ' from exploration to transporting cargoes to the West Coast and Asia. The company is one of the owners of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline system, owns tankers and operates a fleet of airplanes.
Hilcorp Luke Saugier, Hilcorp Alaska senior vice president, told the committee that Hilcorp operates on both the North Slope and in Cook Inlet, with two rigs active in Cook Inlet and six on the North Slope. (See story on Hilcorp's Cook Inlet operations in Feb. 15 issue of Petroleum News.)
On the North Slope Hilcorp operates from the Point Thomson unit on the east to Nikaitchuq and Oooguruk in the west, including Endicott, Prudhoe Bay, Northstar and Milne Point.
In 2025, it had rigs at Nikaitchuq, Milne Point, Prudhoe Bay ' where it operates on behalf of itself, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil ' and at Point Thomson, where it operates on behalf of itself and ExxonMobil.
Hilcorp will drill a development well at Point Thomson, the first since 2016, in a project that started in 2024, and required moving Doyon 15 from Nikaitchuq to Point Thomson during the 2025 barging season, multiple ice roads and major construction projects.
The new well is forecast to produce 6,000 barrels of oil per day, with first oil anticipated in the second half of 2026.
The 2025-26 ice road season, from November through January, saw 107 miles of ice roads built at a cost of more than $50 million, with the longest the 48-mile Point Thomson ice road.
There was a turnaround at Gathering Center 2 at Prudhoe which involved 500 people over 34 days and included: upgrading the gas dehydration system, valve and piping repairs/replacement, PWI pump control upgrades, installation of tie-in for future interstate vessel and replacement of flare tips. The project improved the gas quality going to the gas plants and increased the gas rate from 1.05 billion cubic feet to 1.3 bcf.
At Prudhoe, work has begun on Project Taiga, two new drilling pads: Omega and I, to develop additional Schrader Bluff resource in western Prudhoe Bay. Initial development was from L Pad in 2024, with some 10,000 bpd of new production online.
Additional appraisal and a plan were developed in 2025, leveraging Hilcorp polymer flood experience.
Gravel will be laid for O Pad in 2026, with front-end engineering and design progressing.
Investment is estimated at $1 billion-plus for each pad, resulting in 30,000 additional bpd from each.
At Nikaitchuq Hilcorp plans a 13-well program, installation of polymer injection and a production header expansion with 2026 production adding 9,000 bpd and first oil in the first quarter.
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