Recycling black gold: North Slope oil firms foster new plan of "waste not, want not." (North Slope Burough, Alaska; waste management at BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. and Arco Alaska Inc.)

• Author: Tyson, Ray

North Slope field operators are learning that prevention in controlling wastes from oil production can avert big liability headaches down the road while furthering their cause in the political arena.

Steven Taylor, manager of environmental and regulatory affairs for BP Exploration (Alaska), believes it's just a matter of time before many of the waste control methods used in the Alaska Arctic are adopted worldwide.

Says Taylor, "This is a pioneer technology, and I anticipate seeing other companies picking up on it any place where habitat is a concern. If you eliminate surface disposal, you eliminate the loss of habitat and the long-term liability associated with that."

During the past few years, Alaska's oil industry has made significant progress in developing new technologies to handle the mountains of drilling muds and cuttings and related hydrocarbon wastes being generated on the North Slope.

Drilling Wastes "Recycled"

Rather than dispose of drilling wastes in surface reserve pits, which was the common practice on the North Slope, the cuttings are now ground up in a machine and injected, along with muds, into the non-oil producing cretaceous formation 4,000 to 7,000 feet below the surface.

Engineers also learned that cuttings from the first several thousand feet of drilling were essentially alluvial gravel and could be washed and reused for building roads and in other construction projects. In 1990, the Prudhoe Bay field alone produced about 612,500 barrels of muds and cuttings.

Taylor played a key role in the effort. After transferring to Alaska from BP's mineral business in Salt Lake City, Utah, he concluded some six years ago that the same grinding concepts used to process copper ore could be used to break down drilling cuttings. Though management supported him, he says, the drilling engineers resisted.

Recalls Taylor, "They said there was no way to grind that much material. I said I just came from an operation that grinds 120,000 tons a day, and we can't grind 30,000 to 40,000 tons."

Taylor concedes that he was a bit "underhanded" in getting his way. When BP sought government approvals to develop the Hurl State accumulation on the western fringe of Prudhoe Bay, Taylor left reserve pits out of the application.

"They had no choice because they had no reserve pits to put it in. I had management's support, but the drilling department was not very happy with me," he says.

Long-term Costs Lower

While initial costs to grind and inject are...