ARCO EYES DEVELOPMENT OF KUVLUM FIND IN BEAUFORT

Sept. 13, 1993
While Arco Alaska Inc. proceeds with the first follow-up to its Kuvlum discovery well in the Beaufort Sea, Arco Exploration & Production Technology (AEPT) engineers in Plano, Tex., are laying plans for development of the field. Assuming the follow-up well and another planned for this year's drilling season confirm the size of the strike, platforms that follow will have to contend not only with 100 ft thick moving ice floes but also, because of proximity to the Arctic National Wildlife

While Arco Alaska Inc. proceeds with the first follow-up to its Kuvlum discovery well in the Beaufort Sea, Arco Exploration & Production Technology (AEPT) engineers in Plano, Tex., are laying plans for development of the field.

Assuming the follow-up well and another planned for this year's drilling season confirm the size of the strike, platforms that follow will have to contend not only with 100 ft thick moving ice floes but also, because of proximity to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with minimizing the onshore footprint.

As many as three large platforms may be required to develop the field, Arco planners say. And because of the arctic locale, the platforms will be among the strongest in the world.

Several structural concepts are being evaluated by AEPT, with findings to assist Arco Alaska in making decisions late this year or early in 1994.

It is anticipated it will take about 10 years to develop the field, which may hold as much as 1 billion bbl of oil.

Thirty to 100 miles of offshore pipelines will be required, AEPT said. One concept under evaluation is construction of pipelines well below potential extreme ice gouge depths in the seabed.

PROTECTING THE WHALES

With drilling under way from Kulluk, the arctic class semisubmersible rig from which the discovery well was drilled, Arco Alaska is making an extensive effort to placate North Slope whaling communities that have challenged federal approval of the company's exploration program in the Beaufort Sea.

The company's whale monitoring program has been described by the National Marine Fisheries Service as "the most comprehensive plan carried out in open water during the fall migration of bowhead whales."

James M. Davis, Arco Alaska's senior vice-president of exploration and land, said the program has been virtually doubled in response to whalers' concerns and recommendations of scientific reviewers. The program includes having an Alaska Eskimo

Whaling Commission observer aboard all monitoring flights.

Arco Alaska is curtailing its seismic surveys during periods when the main bowhead migration proceeds through the area, with one phase ending Sept. 1 and a second Sept. 15 if Barrow, Kaktovik, and Nuiqsut communities have not met their quotas. The company is operating ice management vessels supporting the Kulluk at minimum practicable levels during bowhead migration.

Arco Alaska also is setting up a communications network, as it has done in the past, linking whaling camps at Cross Island and Narwhal Island, villages of Nuiqsut and Kaktovik, whaling boats, and oil industry vessels through a base station at Deadhorse. The company is providing marine radios and satellite positioning units to participating whaling crews.

The purpose of the network is to avoid conflicts between oil operations and subsistence hunters and provide emergency assistance to whalers encountering life threatening situations at sea.

Copyright 1993 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.