State estimates North Slope production down 10 percent

A draft of production estimates out for comments by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources Division of Oil and Gas forecasts a 10 percent drop for North Slope production from 1998 to 1999.

Bill Van Dyke, petroleum manager for the division, told PNA March 9 that last year when the division estimated 1999 production it was projecting only a 2 percent drop from 1998 to 1999. Van Dyke said that “the bad news is, it’s a 10 percent drop, but compared to the year before it’s pretty comparable.” North Slope production dropped 9 percent from 1997 to 1998 when prices were better and there were a lot of rigs running, reflecting a fairly good natural decline rate, he said.

“It won’t be as bad as it could be,” Van Dyke said. “There was so much drilling in ’97 and ’98 that you can live off that for a while.”

Van Dyke said that the division hopes to see North Slope production flattening out again by 2002 or 2003 once Alpine and Northstar begin producing. Additional production should also be coming from West Sak and Schrader Bluff viscous oil by then, as well as potentially another 50,000 barrels a day from Prudhoe Bay satellites.

The largest barrel drop projected is at Prudhoe Bay, where last year’s estimate of 660,000 barrels a day for 1999 has been reduced to 610,000 barrels a day. The largest per barrel increase is for the Tarn field, now projected to produce 22,000 barrels a day in 1999, compared to last year’s forecast of 10,000 barrels a day. Expected production from the Badami field has been reduced from 35,000 barrels a day to 3,000 barrels a day; viscous projects at West Sak and Schrader Bluff, both previously estimated at 12,000 barrels a day, have been reduced to 2,000 and 5,000 barrels a day, respectively.