Arctic offshore technology advances: production and prospects in Chukchi and Beaufort OCS fields.

• Author: Bradner, Mike
• Position: OIL & GAS

Alaska's onshore North Slope still has billions of barrels of oil yet to be discovered, government geologists say, but the new fields expected to be found will be modest in size and expensive to develop, they say.

With luck, this may be enough to keep the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) operating at its current rate of five hundred thousand barrels day per day, one fourth of its original capacity.

Will it ever be possible to increase the flow of oil through TAPS? What are the prospects for that?

One place where there could be large discoveries--the kind that will really make a difference in the utilization of the pipeline--is the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). But politically ANWR seems to be locked up.

Likewise, prospective oil-prone areas of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) are off-limits to drilling. These are coastal areas of northern NPR-A which parallel the "Barrow Arch," the broad oil-prone geologic formation stretching across the northern North Slope and where the large, prolific oil fields were discovered on state lands further east.

Unfortunately, this area of northern NPR-A is also a prolific summer nesting area for migratory waterfowl. Keeping the drill rigs out of these areas has become a top priority for national environmental groups second only to ANWR.

OCS Prospects

Increasingly, it is seen that the big flow of oil to rebuild TAPS' oil flow, and additional gas for a future gas pipeline, will have to come from offshore, mainly the federally-owned Chukchi and Beaufort seas Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) off northern Alaska. There are many large, untested geologic formations that are now known in these areas, and it is confirmed from previous drilling that there actually is oil and gas, although the discoveries, made years ago, were not economic to develop.

Two oil discoveries were made in the eastern Beaufort Sea, east of Prudhoe Bay offshore of Point Thomson. One was "Hammerhead," a find by Unocal Corporation. The other was "Kuvlum," a discovery by ARCO Alaska.

Neither was considered economic to develop at the time, but the confirmation that oil was there prompted Shell, which had also been active in the Beaufort Sea, to take another look at the region with the advantage of more modern technology. When the federal government held OCS lease sales in the Beaufort in 2005 and 2007, Shell bid and acquired a substantial number of leases.

It is also known that there is oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea. Shell found both when it drilled an OCS exploration well at the "Burger" prospect when that was drilled by Shell in 1990. Again, the find was not considered economic, and Shell filed away...