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BLM moves forward on legacy wells Anticipates completing cleanup of another 18 well sites in NPR-A this summer using funding from the Helium Stewardship Act ALAN BAILEY Petroleum News
The Bureau of Land Management is moving ahead with a project to remediate a series of old wells in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, the agency has announced. A contractor is already mobilizing a plan to deal with 18 of the wells by the end of the summer.
Referred to as legacy wells, the wells were drilled by the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Geological Survey between 1944 and 1982. The wells were, in general, not properly plugged and, with aging and deteriorating wellheads, they pose safety risks and raise the possibility of environmental damage.
21 wells remediated BLM has already cleaned up 21 of the wells at a cost to the federal government of $99 million, Nicole Hayes, BLM’s legacy wells project coordinator, told a press briefing on Feb. 17. Funding for this year’s remediation project comes from the Helium Stewardship Act - in 2013 Sen. Lisa Murkowski arranged for the inclusion of $50 million in funding in that act for the NPR-A legacy well program, Hayes said.
“The Helium Act funding will allow us to clean up a significant number of the legacy wells to protect the public and the environment,” said BLM Alaska State Director Bud Cribley in a Feb. 17 press release. “Remediation of the remaining wells will require tremendous additional resources over the coming years, but we are committed to doing our part to finish the job.”
The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the state agency responsible for oversight of well safety, has long pressed for BLM action to deal with the legacy well problem. The commission is “tickled to death” that the well remediation is proceeding and the commission fully supports what BLM is doing, said AOGCC Chair Cathy Foerster. AOGCC has been helping BLM prioritize the remediation effort.
136 legacy wells Hayes said the remediation program had started in 2002 and that there were a total of about 136 legacy wells that required attention. In 2013 BLM put together a strategic plan, identifying 68 wells that had by that time been cleaned up or that did not need further action; 18 wells that were still being used by the U.S. Geological Survey for Arctic climate monitoring; and 50 wells that required some level of remediation, Hayes said. Remediation might involve subsurface work, surface cleanup or some combination of the two.
BLM worked with AOGCC to rank the 50 wells in terms of the urgency with which they needed to be fixed; the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation identified situations where surface cleanup was needed. Typically, remediating a well involves plugging and abandoning the well, picking up surface debris and identifying any soil contamination, Hayes explained.
Concerns with Arctic coastal erosion triggered an acceleration in the program in 2005, with the availability of emergency funding to deal with the erosion issue. And, following the award of the $50 million in funding from the Helium Stewardship Act, in 2015 BLM was able to use $10 million of that funding to deal with three wells at Umiat and to do surface cleanup at three sites on Cape Simpson, on the Beaufort Sea coast, Hayes said.
Companies contracted With the remaining $40 million BLM has been able to award contracts to two Native owned companies, Marsh Creek LLC and Olgoonik Construction LLC. The agency can invite these companies to bid on task orders for well remediation and cleanup. BLM has since awarded three task orders to Marsh Creek, to work on clusters of wells this year - working on well clusters rather than individual wells reduces the per-well cost of the remediation. This year’s work involves seven legacy wells in the Barrow area and 11 wells in the Cape Simpson area, Hayes said.
Although this year’s work will complete the remediation of most of the particularly critical wells, there will remain 29 wells yet to be dealt with and probably about $15 million of remaining funding. BLM will likely use that remaining money to initiate another task order, either this year or next year, to address wells in the Wolf Creek area of NPR-A, Hayes said.
But with the 25 to 29 wells remaining after that not being clustered and being located at particularly remote locations, further work will prove particularly expensive. Because of the heavy equipment required, it costs $3 million to $5 million to mobilize to a site - it will likely cost a total of $100 million to deal with the remaining wells, Hayes said.
Technical challenges Rob Brumbaugh, minerals specialist in the BLM Energy and Minerals Branch, said that one of the technical issues in dealing with the legacy wells is a general lack of well records. In addition, the wells have old wellhead components and potentially collapsed well casings. With the wells penetrating the hundreds of feet of permafrost under the North Slope, plugging a well with cement typically involves first putting warm brine down the well bore to melt the ice plugs that tend to block the well below the surface, Brumbaugh said. And, since it may not be known whether the well can flow oil or gas, it is necessary to ensure that pressure control equipment is in place before conducting that ice melting operation, Hayes added.
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