Engineering new oilfields: arctic considerations.

• Author: Slaten, Russ
• Position: OIL & GAS

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Oilfield engineers work and design projects in some of the harshest climates, from the deserts of Africa and the Middle East to the stifling jungles of Brazil and in the bitter cold of the North Slope.

ConocoPhillips Alaska, Inc. operates the Kuparuk oilfield on the North Slope, the second largest oilfield in North America after Prudhoe Bay. Although production began at Kuparuk in 1981, ConocoPhillips is still establishing new drill sites on the expansive Kuparuk field.

ConocoPhillips Drill Site 2S

Drill Site 2S began when ConocoPhillips drilled an appraisal well near the southwest section of the Kuparuk field in winter 2012. The results led to the development of Drill Site 2S, an undeveloped section of the Kuparuk formation. The gravel pad was laid in first quarter 2014, with facilities construction in 2015, followed by drilling and first oil in October 2015. The $475 million project saw 250 workers at peak construction and is estimated to produce eight thousand barrels per day at peak production.

To understand the process of engineering this field, first look at the teams that make up a project of this magnitude.

ConocoPhillips works with four major teams involving engineers: subsurface group, drilling group, facilities group, and finally the operations group, says Scott Pessetto, capital projects manager at ConocoPhillips Alaska.

The subsurface group is made up of petrophysicists, geologists, and reservoir engineers, who identify where the oil and gas wealth may be under the surface. The drilling group appraises the size of the reservoir, and then depending on the results, the facilities group helps to design and build infrastructure like pipelines, processing facilities, pads, airports, and roadways. The operations group takes over after construction to operate and maintain the facilities for the life of the field, Pessetto says.

"On a new project like this engineering has to work closely with operations and subsurface," says Curtis Johnson, senior project lead and engineer at ConocoPhillips Alaska for the Drill Site 2S development. "We [the facilities team] build it, then we hand it over to operations, and they actually have to work the field for the next twenty to forty years, so they have a lot of input in engineering early on."

ConocoPhillips has been producing oil on the Kuparuk field for decades, but upon appraisal of Drill Site 2S the company realized the lateral extension of the Kuparuk formation, says...