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BLM finds no leaks so far at NPR-A abandoned wells Agency to visit sites of drilling done from 1940s through 1980s by 2004, to check condition of old wells, will do reports and recommendations as they go by The Associated Press
The Bureau of Land Management did not find anything alarming over the summer after it finished its first look at 37-years worth of abandoned wells and drill sites in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
BLM staff visited 30 of the 130 to 141 sites to determine how to bring them into compliance with rules governing abandoned petroleum exploration sites.
State officials feared that the wells would leak crude or gas if they were not capped properly.
The sites and wells are left over from federal exploration that began in the 1940s and continued to the 1980s on 23 million North Slope acres.
“We want to close the issue,” said Bob Fisk, BLM senior program lead on legacy wells.
The abandoned sites became a BLM concern in 1976 when Congress transferred jurisdiction from the Navy to the Department of Interior and changed the reserve’s name from Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4.
BLM had not done anything with the wells and drill sites since then, but environmental laws have changed, requiring that all wells and drill holes be closed in a certain manner if work is concluded.
One well leaked last year Last year one well in Cape Simpson leaked 30 to 50 gallons of crude. State environmental officials said the incident showed the wells were not being maintained and that other NPR-A wells could be in similar conditions.
BLM countered that there was never any real damage because the well was in a place where crude oil seeps to the surface naturally.
But the bureau started a three-year program to visit each well or drill site, match their findings with old drilling records and come up with a plan, Fisk said.
BLM staff had difficulty finding drill sites this summer. Some collapsed and were either not visible or appeared only as small depressions, Fisk said.
None of the sites BLM investigated were leaking, he said.
The bureau plans to finish onsite inspections by 2004 but will be writing reports and recommendations along the way, Fisk said.
As production falls in other areas of the North Slope, oil company interest in NPR-A has stepped up. Last year, Phillips Alaska, now ConocoPhillips, announced it had discovered three new oil and gas fields in the reserve.
In May, government geologists increased their estimates of NPR-A reserves. The area holds between 1.3 and 5.6 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil, assuming prices of $22 to $30 a barrel, they concluded.
BLM will conduct another lease sale in 2004 in the northwest section of NPR-A and perhaps a section in the northeast, said Ed Bovy, BLM spokesman. Lease holders will not be responsible for the abandoned sites, Bovy said.
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