Concept Study: Exploration and Production in Environmentally Sensitive Arctic Areas

• Main Authors: Shirish Patil, Rich Haut, Tom Williams, Yuri Shur, Mikhail Kanevskiy, Cathy Hanks, Michael Lilly
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: 02 PETROLEUM; ALASKAN NORTH SLOPE; DRILLING; ECONOMICS; EVALUATION; EXPLORATION; HYDRATES; MANAGEMENT; PERMAFROST; PETROLEUM; PIPELINES; PRODUCTION; SNOW; TUNDRA; Arctic; Alaska North Slope; north slope; permafrost; Tundra; Alaska
• Online Access: http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/963368; https://www.osti.gov/biblio/963368; https://doi.org/10.2172/963368

The Alaska North Slope offers one of the best prospects for increasing U.S. domestic oil and gas production. However, this region faces some of the greatest environmental and logistical challenges to oil and gas production in the world. A number of studies have shown that weather patterns in this region are warming, and the number of days the tundra surface is adequately frozen for tundra travel each year has declined. Operators are not allowed to explore in undeveloped areas until the tundra is sufficiently frozen and adequate snow cover is present. Spring breakup then forces rapid evacuation of the area prior to snowmelt. Using the best available methods, exploration in remote arctic areas can take up to three years to identify a commercial discovery, and then years to build the infrastructure to develop and produce. This makes new exploration costly. It also increases the costs of maintaining field infrastructure, pipeline inspections, and environmental restoration efforts. New technologies are needed, or oil and gas resources may never be developed outside limited exploration stepouts from existing infrastructure. Industry has identified certain low-impact technologies suitable for operations, and has made improvements to reduce the footprint and impact on the environment. Additional improvements are needed for exploration and economic field development and end-of-field restoration. One operator-Anadarko Petroleum Corporation-built a prototype platform for drilling wells in the Arctic that is elevated, modular, and mobile. The system was tested while drilling one of the first hydrate exploration wells in Alaska during 2003-2004. This technology was identified as a potentially enabling technology by the ongoing Joint Industry Program (JIP) Environmentally Friendly Drilling (EFD) program. The EFD is headed by Texas A&M University and the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC), and is co-funded by the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). The EFD participants believe that the platform concept could ...