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NPR-A lease sale allows exploration momentum to continue westward
Kristen Nelson, PNA editor-in-chief
No development plans are on the table after the June 3 Bureau of Land Management's National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska lease sale, but Anadarko Petroleum Corp., which bid with Phillips Alaska Inc., said the acreage will allow exploration momentum to continue to the west. Anadarko’s share of the combined $9.6 million in bids was $2.7 million and the 34 tracts the companies acquired cover more than 282,000 gross acres. With the new acreage, Anadarko’s net leasehold in NPR-A will total 277,500 acres.
Anadarko said the tracts are primarily west of the companies’ Moose’s Tooth discovery.
“The additional acreage in the NPR-A will allow us to continue our exploration momentum westward across the petroleum reserve, to examine new ideas and explore new stratigraphic intervals,” John Seitz, Anadarko president and CEO, said in a statement.
“Alaska is an important frontier exploration area,” Seitz said. “Anadarko is one of the largest acreage holders on the North Slope, and these new tracts further enhance our prospect inventory.”
Mark Pease, Anadarko’s vice president of international and Alaska operations, said earlier this year that his company and its partner, Phillips Alaska Inc., hope to declare their NPR-A Moose’s Tooth prospect commercial this year.
The Moose’s Tooth was one of several prospects with discovery wells announced in May 2001 by Phillips Alaska President Kevin Meyers.
“Though the results are preliminary, we’re confident the discoveries will prove to be of commercial quantities. We believe that the five successful wells have encountered three separate hydrocarbon accumulations,” Meyers said at the time.
Ownership in Moose’s Tooth and Alpine is split between Phillips at 78 percent and Anadarko at 22 percent. Phillips is the operator of both.
Bob Schneider, field manager for the Fairbanks office of BLM, which is responsible for permitting and monitoring surface activities in the NPR-A told PNA in late May that he expects to receive a full field development proposal this fall from Phillips, one of three companies that have drilled a total of 13 exploration wells in NPR-A in the last three years. New players help share risk Phillips Alaska spokeswoman Dawn Patience told PNA after the sale that Phillips is pleased with the sale results and “pleased to see some of the new players in NPR-A because it offers the opportunity to share the risk out there.”
Phillips put $8 million on the table, she said, and spent $6.89 million on its share of leases on which it was apparent high bidder with partner Anadarko.
Patience also noted that new companies and expanded acreage have the potential to create new jobs and new revenues for the state.
EnCana’s Alaska program growing
Alan Boras, spokesman for EnCana Corp., told PNA that his company’s acquisitions at the June 3 NPR-A lease sale are part of the company’s “growing program of exploration in Alaska.” EnCana took five of six leases at the BLM sale on which it bid $974,236.
EnCana came to Alaska in 1999 as AEC Oil & Gas (USA) Inc., a subsidiary of Alberta Energy Co. Ltd. which merged with Pan-Canadian Energy Corp. in April to become EnCana Corp.
In March, AEC told the Legislature that the company had 1.3 million exploration acres. It added 56,980 acres at the NPR-A lease sale.
Boras told PNA that the NPR-A acreage adds to acreage the company holds in the foothills and on the North Slope.
“This just adds to our portfolio and will be part of our ongoing exploration program,” Boras said.
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