Point Thomson's New Operator: Hilcorp Alaska brings its efficiency expertise to North Slope gas.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: OIL & GAS

The corporate neighborhood on the North Slope has changed significantly in recent years. Long-term anchor residents BR ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips formed an exploration and production foundation that held steady for decades as other oil and gas entities moved in--and more often than not moved out. These three international oil giants held the major interests in Prudhoe Bay and Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., and over the years have paid millions upon millions of dollars to the state in royalties and taxes.

Nothing lasts forever.

BP marked forty years of operating Prudhoe Bay in 2017, celebrating the milestone with a goal to "go forty more," and in early 2019 BP crews were approximately halfway through a 455-square-mile seismic survey in Prudhoe Bay to "help really sustain a longer-term drilling program," said then-BP Alaska President Janet Weiss. The long-term was quite a bit shorter than BP was publicly sharing at the time, as in August 2019 it announced its intentions to sell its Alaska assets to Hilcorp.

Founded in 1989 in Texas, Hilcorp took its first step into the far north in 2012 in Cook Inlet, acquiring assets from Chevron and adding assets acquired from Marathon to its Cook Inlet portfolio the following year. Hilcorp continued to build its Alaska assets in Cook Inlet and on the North Slope over the last ten years, and today its profile includes nearly 1 million gross acres, more than 1,700 producing wells, and more than 1,500 employees, all of which contribute to delivering more than 340,000 gross barrels of oil per day. The company invested $340 million in the state in 2019 alone and paid almost $160 million in state taxes and royalties in that same year.

BP accepted $5.6 billion in exchange for its Alaska assets, and the agreement included Hilcorp taking over operations of Prudhoe Bay, which it did in June 2020. Roughly half of BP's employees accepted positions with Hilcorp at the time of the transition.

Two years later and Hilcorp has once again taken on employees from another North Slope player and operations of an additional site: Point Thomson.

As of January, Hilcorp is operating Point Thomson, which holds an estimated 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 200 million barrels of natural gas condensate. At present, gas condensate is the only product exported from Point Thomson; a 22-mile pipeline connects the field to TAPS, which then carries approximately 10,000 barrels per day of gas condensate south to Valdez. The...