Exploration and drilling winter forecast: crystal ball rather cloudy for Alaska oil and gas.

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

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A modest winter exploration season appears to be shaping up for Alaska's North Slope, but it could also become a very light one if money for drilling remains scarce.

What we know now is that independent Savant Resources will be working on two wells in its Badami project area east of Prudhoe Bay. ExxonMobil, with BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips as partners, will also be continuing work at the Point Thomson gas and liquid condensates project farther to the east. While Point Thomson wells aren't technically pure exploration wells--the gas and condensate resource has long been known--drilling will still test oil deposits, along with preparing the Point Thomson field to produce the liquid condensates.

NO PLANS YET

What is still uncertain is whether other companies substantially active in exploration last winter will be rolling out the drill rigs again this season. Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc. and Anadarko Petroleum Inc. had significant projects in 2008 and 2009, but face tight budgets in the home office this year.

Anadarko has been focused in a gas-exploration program in the foothills region of the southern North Slope where it drilled two test wells and completed a third started the year before. One of Anadarko's partners in the project reported that one well, drilled earlier into the Gubik gas deposit, a known find, flowed at 15 million cubic feet of gas per day.

Chevron completed a four-well testing program in the White Hills area south of Prudhoe Bay. ConocoPhillips, with Anadarko as a partner, drilled two test wells in the northeast National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska near where the two companies made previous discoveries.

Brooks Range Petroleum, a small independent actively exploring several prospects, says it hopes to secure funding for drilling to test one of several prospects near the large producing fields, but won't know until later in the year. The company has found oil in two wells drilled previously, but needs to further define the prospects. Two other explorers, FEX, the U.S. subsidiary of Talisman Energy, a major independent, and UltraStar, a small Alaska-based independent, say they definitely won't be drilling. FEX made promising discoveries two years ago in three wells drilled NPR-A, where its efforts are focused, and is now working to define and hopefully test the discoveries. UltraStar, an Alaska-based small independent, drilled last year to test prospects near existing producing fields in the Prudhoe Bay area.

MUM RESULTS

The results of last winter's exploration season aren't yet known. Chevron and ConocoPhillips aren't saying much about what they found. Anadarko says it left one of its gas exploration wells in a condition where it can...