A season of promise: oil and gas projects result in near-record levels of activity on North Slope.

AuthorBradner, Mike

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Oil and gas activity has been at near-record levels on the North Slope in the last half year, with major projects under way to replace the Prudhoe Bay crude oil transit pipeline system and a project by Pioneer Natural Resources Alaska Inc. to install facilities for its new Oooguruk offshore field.

Pioneer's Oooguruk is due to go into production in 2008 and will be producing between 15,000 and 18,000 barrels per day by 2010, the company says.

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Pioneer is now hooking up oil and gas process modules on an artificial offshore production island and onshore, at the point where a 5-mile buried pipeline comes ashore. Pioneer and its contractors installed the pipeline and moved the modules to their locations in a busy winter construction season. At the peak of activity there were more than 600 construction workers on Pioneer's project.

BP, meanwhile, is in the middle of a two-year, $250 million project to replace pipes at Prudhoe Bay that were damaged by corrosion. The company had between 300 and 350 construction workers busy on the pipe installation last winter, and has retained the work force through the summer to do installation of new facilities needed to support the pipelines.

WAIT UNTIL NEXT YEAR

Next winter the pipe replacement work will continue, and BP intends to have most of its project complete by mid-2008 and in operation by the end of that year. The company is replacing the 34-inch and 30-inch crude oil pipelines installed in 1976 with smaller-diameter pipes of varying sizes, mostly 20-inches and 18-inches in diameter.

The pipes being replaced carry processed crude oil from processing plants, called Gathering Stations on the west side of Prudhoe and Flow Stations on the east side, to Skid 50, a metering station at the entry of Pump Station 1 of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline system.

Smaller diameter pipes BP is now installing will keep the liquids moving at a faster speed, which will prevent the buildup of solids and sludge in the pipes. Consultants to the company say that the sludge that accumulated in the older pipes over the years encouraged microbacterial action that led to pin-hole spots of corrosion, which caused leaks that were discovered last year. The new system being installed by BP is intended to last 40 years or more, the company says.

GOOD OLD DAYS

Prudhoe is now producing just over one fourth of the oil that it produced in its peak years of 1988 and 1989.

Activity has been feverish with all the work that has been going on in the Prudhoe area and bed-space has been extremely tight. Many contractors say they could have used even more people to handle the workload last winter, but they were constrained by the...

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