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First well completed and tested at Fiord 2005-06 winter construction season at Alpine expected to be busier than last as two satellites, facilities enhancements completed Kristen Nelson Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief
ConocoPhillips Alaska and its partner Anadarko Petroleum are on schedule for first production from Alpine satellite fields Fiord and Nanuq at the end of 2006. The projects were approved in December and construction began last winter.
Mark Ireland, ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Western North Slope development manager, said gravel was laid for both projects over the winter, vertical support members for the pipelines were installed as well as some of the bridge crossings. Three small channels in the Colville River have to be crossed by the pipelines between Fiord, the CD3 (Colville Delta 3) drill site, and the main facilities at CD1.
Gravel was mined, excavated and laid for the pads, an aircraft landing strip at Fiord — a roadless development — and the road from Nanuq, CD4, to CD1. “We got some very high-quality gravel,” Ireland told Petroleum News, making it easier to pack it this summer, as the gravel is worked to get water out and give final shape to roads and pads.
Fiord is in the Colville Delta, and is roadless because of environmental concerns, he said. “It’s a large bird-nesting area,” and the company treats it “as highly sensitive” and does its “utmost to avoid any impact that can be avoided,” he said.
Because Fiord is roadless, drilling is restricted to the winter, which “will help to minimize any activities in the summertime when the birds are actually there.” And because there is no road, there will be no road traffic, he said. First wells drilled at Fiord Drilling began at Fiord this winter, using Doyon 19, the rig which has done all of the development drilling at Alpine.
Three wells were started at Fiord; one was drilled to completion, Ireland said. Each of the satellites has two reservoirs. “Fiord consists of a Kuparuk zone, which is underlain by a deeper Nechelik sand,” he said. Both satellites “will be developed with all horizontal wells from the start, similar to the development plan for Alpine.” There will also, as at Alpine, be a miscible water alternating gas enhanced oil recovery implemented at startup.
There will be 20 wells or less at each of the satellites, compared to Alpine which has more than 100 wells, so the satellites are “much smaller in scale and scope, but the same technology is being applied as far as the drilling and enhanced recovery goes.”
The Fiord well which was completed was tested; the other two were “drilled just to the casing point in the reservoirs and the horizontal sections on those will be drilled out this coming winter,” he said.
Depending on the winter season, “three to four to five at the most” wells would be drilled at Fiord in a winter, Ireland said: “So we expect it will take another three seasons or more to complete the drilling.”
Doyon 19 moved from Fiord to Alpine to drill more development wells there at the end of the ice road season, and will move to Nanuq in the October-November timeframe to begin development drilling there. That will be the pattern for the next several years, Ireland said: The rig will move to Fiord during the ice road season and then back to Nanuq as the ice road season closes.
Startup for both satellites is targeted for the fourth quarter of 2006, with combined peak production expected to hit 35,000 barrels per day gross in 2008, Ireland said.
Alpine production has increased for five years in a row, every year since production started, he said. “We’re on track to do that again this year.” ACX3 also under way Alpine hit new production records at the end of July and the beginning of August, topping 129,000 bpd. This production level comes as a result of phase 1 and 2 of the Alpine capacity expansion, ACX1 and ACX2.
ACX1 was completed last year and ACX2 was completed in June during a maintenance shutdown, Ireland said. A lot of the ACX2 work was completed last year; this year “we installed the final cooling equipment,” and when the field came back up, production rates began to rise. Production in August has been lower because of warm weather. Ireland said Alpine production is expected to average 125,000 bpd in August because the warm weather limits gas compression ability and hence oil production, since gas is produced with the oil and must be reinjected.
ACX1 increased produced water handling, with some increased oil production. As “water injection matures, our patterns would start to produce more water,” Ireland said. The company knew from the beginning it would need to increase its water-handling capacity, he said, and the investment was made when it became necessary. ACX1 also increased oil and gas handling capacity somewhat.
“ACX2 was primarily geared at increasing our oil capacity,” and production levels increased when it was completed.
ACX3, which will be completed next summer, is a condensate stabilizer which provides a cleaner break between the oil and the gas leaving the facility, providing more hydrocarbon components to aid in enhanced oil recovery, allowing the company to fine tune miscible injectant at Alpine, so this project will have longer-term results, geared to increasing production through EOR, rather than to immediate production increases. Logistics a challenge Logistics are a challenge in the Alpine area. “We’ve got no road connection back,” so for eight or nine months everything has to be flown out, and then “in the few months of the year that we have the ice road, it’s just truckload after truckload,” Ireland said. Some 1,600 truckloads of materials went out last winter, “and that’s not an unusual amount for us.”
All of the tubulars needed for drilling have to go out on the ice road, along with bulk products for drilling. And with pipelines to be built, the pipe also has to go out on the ice road, along with the modules to be installed: “all the materials for the new projects as well as the ongoing operations, maintenance-type work.”
Planning goes on year-round, he said: “And it’s really paid off for us. The project folks and operations folks that are involved with this planning effort have just done a tremendous job for us,” Ireland said, allowing “us to accomplish the things that we have.” Next winter busier During last winter’s construction season about 450 people worked on the Fiord and Nanuq projects at Alpine. Among the larger contractors working on the project are VECO and ASRC Energy Services, he said. AIC-Kuukpik joint venture has done the gravel work for the project.
Next winter the construction season should be even busier, Ireland said: “with the two satellites, Fiord and Nanuq, completing another season of construction there and then ACX3 construction going on, we expect to have even more people … employed, than we did last year.”
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