North slope explorers: resurgence of exploration.

• Author: Slaten, Russ
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Oil & Gas

Alaska's North Slope is seeing a resurgence of activity. New companies and new projects--along with the maintenance and redevelopment of existing fields--have all played a role in the Slope's recent growth.

Even with a steady decline of oil throughput in the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) since 1988, employment in the oil and gas industry has fluctuated, but has seen overall growth over the years, according to numbers from the US Department of Revenue and Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development (ADLWD).

High oil prices are the best explanation for the past decade's employment growth, ADLWD said in their June 2013 issue of Alaska Trends. And went on to say a rise in production jobs amid lower output is because "deeper and harder-to-reach oil reserves require greater efforts to extract."

Many oil companies have changed their attitude towards oil exploration on the North Slope since oil tax reform in Alaska, and are now delving into the economic possibilities.

NordAq Energy is exploring oil and gas reserves in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) as well as offshore locations nearby in Smith Bay.

Australian independent, Line Energy, is drilling test wells at Umiat, more than seventy miles southwest of the major North Slope fields, to determine whether or not oil deposits discovered by US agencies are commercially viable.

Brooks Range Petroleum completed a gravel access road and production pad to begin production for its Mustang field, adjacent to the Kuparuk River Unit, by the end of 2014.

Exploration Priority One

Repsol, a Spanish multinational oil and gas company based in Madrid, Spain is relatively new to the North Slope, but is one of the most active companies exploring. Repsol started in 2011, with Armstrong Oil and Gas affiliate 70 & 148, LLC, by drilling two exploration wells at the Colville River delta in the 2011 to 2012 season, then three the next season. Repsol will continue oil exploration this year by drilling two appraisal wells designated as Q-5 and Q-7 in the Qugruk area, fifteen miles west of the Kuparuk River field. Repsol is also set to drill one exploration well and acquire 3D seismic information in the area designated Tuttu 1, southeast of Kuparuk.

"We won't know whether the discovery is commercial until after we analyze this year's data," says Alaska Project Manager for Repsol, Bill Hardman.

Repsol's operations this year had as many as five hundred people in the field, including drillers...