Meltwater production begins

Kristen Nelson

Production has begun from Meltwater, the fourth Kuparuk River satellite to come online.

Phillips Alaska Inc. spokeswoman Dawn Patience told PNA that initial production of 3,000 barrels per day from a single well began Nov. 29. Peak production from the field will be approximately 20,000 bpd. Meltwater was discovered in March 2000 and road, pad, power line and pipeline construction were done over the 2000-2001 winter season. The 50-million barrel field is in the southwestern portion of the Kuparuk River unit, some 27 miles from central processing facility 2.

Ryan Stramp, Phillips Alaska’s Meltwater development coordinator, told PNA in March that Meltwater is the most distant of the Kuparuk satellites — only 10 miles from Tarn, but some 25 miles from production facilities at Kuparuk.

He said the company’s process engineers had to determine if crude oil from the Meltwater pad “would make it on its own energy, or were we going to have to put some pumps or some sort of processing” at the pad. They decided that with a large diameter pipe at the Meltwater pad the natural energy from the reservoir would move the crude oil approximately 25 miles to the processing facility.

Stramp said that 17 or 18 wells will be drilled initially, results assessed, and then the final eight or 10 wells drilled. The reservoir at Meltwater is a little shallower than Kuparuk, about 5,200 feet, and conventional directionally drilled wells are planned.

“We’ve got one central pad and we’re going to develop several square miles of reservoir by directionally drilling out in all directions around the pad,” Stramp said.

The 2000 exploration well produced at 4,000 barrels a day during a short-term test.