What’s good for industry is good for the environment, says DOE

Kay Cashman

PNA Publisher & Managing Editor

At a recent conference in Anchorage, the director of the National Petroleum Technology Office, William Lawson, said that “one of the biggest things” that’s happened since the 1970s is the “tremendous shrinking footprint” of oil industry operations on the environment (see adjacent diagram).

“This is an environmental evolution of the industry. Interestingly, things that make good economic sense often make good environmental sense,” Lawson said at the Feb. 27-28 Alaska Conference co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Alaska Oil and Gas Association. The theme of the conference was, “Reducing the effects of oil and gas exploration and production on Alaska’s North Slope: Issues, practices and technologies.”

Lawson said the oil and gas industry is shrinking the footprint in a number of ways, including “drilling a lot of wells from one pad, doing lateral wells. They’re saving a lot of operating money and really reducing the impact” on the environment.

State Division of Oil and Gas Director Mark Myers said at a November resource conference that Anadarko Petroleum Corp.’s new Arctic platform (see photo on page 1) is an example of how technology is revolutionizing the way oil and gas development is done in Alaska.

“It’s a very simple idea. It’s one of these things that I struck my forehead when I saw it and thought, why didn’t I think of that? We need to extend the winter drilling season, we need to minimize environmental impact, here’s a system that can do that, and probably can be done so cost effectively, obviously with a lower abandonment cost after production. It’s so simple, it’s so brilliant at the same time. Government needs to embrace and encourage these sorts of revolutionary ideas when they come along. We need to be in the forefront.”