Point Thomson's promise: at long last, serious work begins on Alaska's next great oil and gas field.

• Author: Loy, Wesley
• Position: OIL & GAS

After 35 years of frustration, Alaska finally is on a path to achieving production from Point Thomson, one of the richest oil and gas deposits ever discovered in the state.

The production level to start will be modest at 10,000 barrels per day. That barely registers against the nearly 600,000 barrels per day produced overall from Alaska's North Slope.

But make no mistake, establishing any flow at all from the remote eastern North Slope field will stand as a major victory for the state.

The hope is that the inaugural project at Point Thomson, known as the "initial production system," will lead to bigger things. Not only does it have the potential to join the likes of Prudhoe Bay, Kuparuk and Alpine as a major producing field, but Point Thomson also could spark development of other prospects in the area.

Major Construction

Coming into the winter, Point Thomson operator ExxonMobil and its contractors were launching major construction work on the ground. The activity stands in stark contrast to the years of inertia and bitter legal conflict between the state and energy giant over the dormant field.

"For the first time, development of Alaska's eastern North Slope is under way," Gov. Sean Parnell proclaimed in his Jan. 16 State of the State address to the Alaska Legislature.

The Point Thomson development, he said, means billions of dollars in new investments and hundreds of jobs. It also could mean very significant tax and royalty revenue for the state.

The field encompasses about 93,000 state-owned acres along the Beaufort Sea coast, next to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and about 60 miles east of Prudhoe Bay and the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

Point Thomson is regarded as one of the largest proven, undeveloped fields in North America. The main prize is natural gas, estimated at 8 trillion cubic feet. That's about a quarter of all the known gas reserves on the North Slope.

Gas, however, is not the first development target. Rather, ExxonMobil plans to produce a liquid hydrocarbon known as condensate. The company estimates the field holds 200 million barrels of recoverable condensate, which pays like crude oil.

ExxonMobil has pledged field startup and first production no later than May 1, 2016.

To make that deadline, a tremendous amount of work must be done.

The project will consist of three gravel well pads, connecting roads and pipelines, a barge dock, airstrip, housing units, fuel storage tanks, and huge industrial modules to process field...