Alaska's North Slope prosperity: Chukchi OCS and ANWR coastal plain hold promise.

• Author: Liles, Patricia
• Position: OIL & GAS

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Alaska's North Slope could provide a very promising future well into the middle to the latter part of the 21st century for the state's oil and gas industry. If access is granted for areas currently undeveloped and underexplored, including ANWR, promising areas of NPR-A, and off-shore in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas will see development Alaskans hope for.

Oil and gas prices will also play a significant factor in the North Slope's future, as does future governmental action, development of a natural gas pipeline, field infrastructure reclamation requirements, and water and gravel availability in new development areas, according to a recently updated report from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Under the most optimistic scenarios for access, market price, governmental action and other logistical factors, the report includes estimates that Alaska's North Slope contains up to 36 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil and 137 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas.

NEW REPORT

"Alaska North Slope Oil and Gas: A promising future or an area in decline?" is a two-year old report updated by an addendum released in late October. The U.S. Interior Department Minerals Management Service and Bureau of Land Management helped fund the North Slope oil and gas resource assessment, first published in August 2007.

Total cost of the study, including the initial report and the update, was about $490,000 spread over a four-year period, according to Brent Sheets, manager of the Arctic Energy Office in Fairbanks, part of the National Energy Technology Laboratory in the U.S. Department of Energy.

"This is a compilation of publicly available data, but the only one that looks at the North Slope, field by field, and makes various assumptions about production in the future," Sheets said. "After the first study was out, we received quite a bit of feedback, including a couple of oil companies thanking us for this report. I'm quite pleased with how well-received it has been."

In addition to being incorporated into a larger internationally oriented Arctic report required by MMS, the North Slope report can help governmental agencies in planning and preparing for future oil and gas developments.

"It's meant to be a reference document for government--showing where we think production is going to be in the future, to help with our thinking about infrastructure," Sheets said. "It's important for agencies to be aware of the potential and likelihood of...