The state of Alaska is offering what officials describe as “a veritable cornucopia of information” for anyone interested in exploring for North Slope oil.
North Slope leaseholds will be sold as three Special Alaska Lease Sale Areas (SALSA) during the state’s annual North Slope and Beaufort Sea sale, expected for November although the date has yet to be set. State officials plan to announce a sale date by Aug. 31.
The Alaska Oil & Gas Division (OGD) within the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) recently announced the SALSA offerings. Detailed background information is free to the public with what state officials call a modest handling fee.
The three SALSAs include 66,430 acres in Alaska state waters of Harrison Bay on the Beaufort Sea and north of National Petroleum Reserve fields; 23,040 acres covering part of Gwydyr Bay and adjacent areas near Northstar Island field; and 30,720 acres in an inland region called Storms immediately south of Prudhoe Bay.
Final bidding requirements continue to be established. Oil company executives can browse through the data to guide investment decisions and drilling plans. Deputy DNR Commissioner Mark Wiggin told OGJ that the state is providing an unprecedented search tool.
“It’s a tool for the existing oil companies [having Alaska operations], and it sure will make it easier for people less familiar with the Alaska landscape,” Wiggin said. Geologists, geophysicists, and leasing specialists spent about a year gathering data for each SALSA area.
The data are accessible through links to well histories, well tests, information on whether a well ever flowed hydrocarbons to the surface, terminated units in the area, what target a former leaseholder was seeking, cores, core chips, mud logs, gamma, resistivity, density logs, and more.
Continuous tracts
OGD Geologist Kevin Frank said the idea is to auction continuous tracts of leases. SALSA evolved from discussions about how Alaska best could provide seismic data and other information now publicly available.
“We were thinking through it as an explorer,” Frank said. “We did this on a leasehold basis rather than as prospects.”
Both Frank and Wiggin said their goal was to organize the information by area in a way that makes it easy for anyone interested in exploring the North Slope to find specific background.
“The 3D seismic data are what got us rolling to find its highest use,” Frank said. Each SALSA is accompanied by a 3D seismic data set that became public within the last 4 years. The data sets stem from an oil and gas tax credit program that started in 2003.
Oil companies provided exploration information to the state in return for tax credits. The program made the information public after 10 years.
Wiggin said 50 data sets eventually will be released of which 12 are now available.
In addition, OGD compiled all lease and land records for the SALSAs along with all data available from exploration wells drilled in or around those areas.
Most well data comes from the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission records along with some information from the state Geologic Materials Center, a core warehouse and data storage site.
The information can be found online at the following link—http://dog.dnr.alaska.gov/Documents/ResourceEvaluation/Salsa/SALSA_for_PUBLIC_JUL18_FINAL-LIVE.pdf—which itself provides access details and additional links.