Northstar-Geology, Exploration History, and Development Status, Beaufort Sea, Alaska
Titel:
Northstar-Geology, Exploration History, and Development Status, Beaufort Sea, Alaska
Auteur:
Siok, Jerry
Verschenen in:
Marine georesources & geotechnology
Paginering:
Jaargang 17 (1999) nr. 2-3 pagina's 99
Jaar:
1999-01-01
Inhoud:
Exploration for oil at Northstar has been long and costly. Northstar leases were first acquired in 1979 at a joint state and federal sale by Shell Oil, Amerada Hess, and Texas Eastern. The Northstar Unit is 6 mi offshore and about 4 mi northeast of the Point McIntyre Field. Oil was first discovered in Shell's Seal Island 1 in 1983. Five additional appraisal wells were drilled (1983-1986) from two man-made gravel islands in 40 ft of water. Early engineering estimates put the cost of development at $ 1.6 billion. In February 1995, BP Exploration (Alaska) acquired a 98 % interest in the Northstar Unit from Amerada Hess and Shell Oil. When developed by BP, Northstar will be the first oil produced from federal leases in Alaska. To date, the oil industry has invested in excess of $ 140 million in exploration and appraisal operations. An additional $ 90 million was spent on lease bonus bids. The giant Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk Fields lie along the Barrow Arch. This arch is bounded to the north by a rift margin that deepens into the present-day offshore region. Northstar is located among a series of down-stepping faults off this northern rift margin of the Prudhoe Kuparuk high. The structure is a gently south-dipping northwest-trending faulted anticline. The crest of the structure is located near 10,850 ft subsea. The primary reservoir is the Ivishak Formation (325 ft thick) of the Sadlerochit Group. This is the same primary reservoir at Prudhoe Bay, approximately 12 mi to the south. At Northstar the Ivishak is a high-energy, coarse-grained conglomeratic facies of the Ivishak Formation. The primary lithology is a pebbly chert to quartz conglomerate with occasional sandstone. This very high net to gross reservoir appears to contain no regionally continuous permeability barriers. Cementation has reduced primary porosity to less than 15 %. Accurate porosity estimates are difficult to make due to the coarse-grained nature of the lithology and the presence of kaolinite and microporous chert. Permeability is highly variable, but averages 10 to 100 mDarcies. Oil is a very light and volatile 42 API crude with approximately 2,100 ft3 of gas per stock tank barrel of oil. This oil is very different from the heavier oils (26) found to the south in Prudhoe Bay. Estimated recoverable oil reserves range from 100 to 160 million barrels. A free-standing drilling rig is required at Northstar because the reserves are beyond extended-reach drilling techniques from shore-based facilities. The current development plan is to expand the existing Seal Island to about 5 acres. This is significantly less than Endicott's 40-acre island. The proposed drilling and produc tion island will be accessed by summer barges and winter ice roads. Oil, gas, and water will be processed at a stand-alone facility and then sent to shore via a subsurface pipeline. Northstar will have the first Arctic subsea pipeline in Alaska to transport oil to shore facilities (TAPS). Preliminary tests in Spring 1996 were very successful in demonstrating the technology to successfully bury a subsea pipeline safely in the Arctic.
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