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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
February 2021

Vol. 26, No.8 Week of February 21, 2021

AOGCC approves changes at Colville River

ConocoPhillips had asked that the Alpine oil pool be expanded to include what is now the Fiord oil pool; both within CRU boundary

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has approved an application by ConocoPhillips Alaska to amend Conservation Order 443 to essentially roll the Fiord oil pool into the Alpine oil pool. Conservation orders define producing areas and the commission’s rules for the area.

In a Feb. 3 order the commission said the vertical extension of the Alpine oil pool, incorporating the former Fiord oil pool, is now defined as the stratigraphic interval between 6,920 and 7,559 feet measured depth in the Alpine No. 3 well. Reservoirs included in the revised pool are the Jurassic-aged Alpine and Nechelik sandstones within the Kingak formation and the Lower Cretaceous-aged “C sandstones” of the Kuparuk River formation (Kuparuk C), informally known as the Nanuq-Kuparuk, Fiord-Kuparuk and Fiord West Kuparuk reservoirs, the commission said.

“The three reservoirs within the expanded AOP share the same confining intervals for injected fluids,” the commission said.

Well, production and pressure data provide evidence of communication between the Alpine, Nechelik and Kuparuk reservoirs. “In addition to direct sand-on-sand contacts between these reservoirs in other portions of the CRU, it has been demonstrated that the Kuparuk C and Alpine reservoirs are in hydraulic communication through natural fractures,” the same basis, the commission said, on which the former Nanuq-Kuparuk oil pool was previously incorporated into the Alpine oil pool.

The conservation order for the Fiord oil pool has been rescinded and its administrative record incorporated by reference.

The commission also expanded the area injection order for the Alpine oil pool to include the Fiord area.

Fiord West

In its Nov. 5 application ConocoPhillips said the proposed expansion includes the future Fiord West development which will be drilled from the CD2 drillsite, will “accommodate continued western and southern development form CD5 drillsite” and update and standardize pool rules for deep intervals within the Colville River unit “to enable efficient operation and development under a single set of rules for these similar, related and interconnected intervals,” effectively incorporating the Fiord oil pool into the Alpine oil pool.

The new Fiord West development area, the company said, encompasses the western continuation of both the existing Fiord West Kuparuk and Fiord Nanuq accumulations.

The company said the original Alpine oil pool was defined as measured depths of 6,876 to 6,976 feet in the Bergschrund No. 1 well. That was in 1998. In 2009, the Alpine oil pool was expanded to include the Nanuq-Kuparuk due to communication indicated from drilling, well log, pressure and production log data. The Alpine oil pool was redefined as between 6,980 and 7,276 feet in the Alpine No. 1 well. The Alpine oil pool was amended again in 2017 to include sections in the west and exclude some areas on the eastern side, and currently is defined as the interval between measured depths of 6,980 and 7,276 feet in the Alpine No. 1 well.

Wells deferred

Fiord West will be drilled with the big new extended reach rig, Doyon 26. Drilling was planned to begin last year, but in April 2020 ConocoPhillips demobilized its North Slope rig fleet.

The company said in 2019 that six wells were planned at Fiord West, which is expected to produce 20,000 barrels per day gross at its peak.

Work began on Doyon 26, the largest mobile land rig in North America, 2016.

Originally assembled in Nisku, Alberta, the rig was broken down into 267 tractor-trailer loads and began a 2,400 mile journey to the North Slope in July 2019.

“It’s been arriving in loads the entire fall and the team is beginning the reassembly process,” ConocoPhillips Alaska spokeswoman Natalie Lowman told Petroleum News in November 2019.

“When all the pieces arrive, we’ll put it back together like a big Lego to make seven rig modules,” the company’s ERD project director, Paul McGrath, was quoted in July 2019.

McGrath, describing Doyon 26 as “a game changer” for ConocoPhillips in Alaska, said ConocoPhillips Alaska worked on the rig beginning with front-end engineering and design studies and through the concept stage for about four years, with assistance during construction from colleagues in ConocoPhillips Canada.

The ERD rig, which will drill from the existing CD2 drillsite, which has been extended to 12 acres to accommodate the rig and development, is an alternative to a new pad in the Fiord West area, which the company has described as problematic because it is along the coast in wetlands.

For the company to continue to hold leases in the area, it had to commit to drill, and Doyon 26 was the method it chose.

Among activities planned for 2021, the company said in November that the second half of 2021 will see the commissioning and startup of Doyon 26, which will begin drilling Fiord West from the Alpine CD2 drill site.






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