Bush budget boosts well remediation Additional $11.2 million would fund two future NPR-A sites; BLM working at Teshekpuk Lake legacy well this winter By Eric Lidji Petroleum News
President Bush’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2009 includes an $11.2 million increase to the North Slope well remediation program run by the Bureau of Land Management.
The program is responsible for plugging legacy wells and excavating old well sites deemed to be a threat to the Arctic environment.
The proposed budget allocation would increase the total budget of the program to $17.1 million. The money would go toward funding future cleanup activities for the Atigaru Point No. 1 and Drew Point No. 1 wells, both located along the coast of the northeast planning area of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
This winter BLM is cleaning up the East Teshekpuk No. 1 well, appropriately located on the eastern edge of Teshekpuk Lake in the NPR-A.
Crews expect to finish building ice roads in the area by the first week of March and plan to finish the cleanup effort before the end of spring. The work is being done by Marsh Creek LLC, an 8(a) company jointly owned by the Kaktovik Inupiat Corp. and Fairweather E & P Services.
BLM hopes to finish East Teshekpuk in one winter to cut down on mobilization costs.
“By doing this all in one fell swoop, they save a lot of money,” said Wayne Svejnoha, environmental program manager for BLM.
The East Teshekpuk No. 1 project is expected to cost $15 million funded over two fiscal cycles.
Program identified biggest risks The well remediation program began several years ago under emergency conditions, as rapidly eroding coastline along the North Slope threatened to dump the J.W. Dalton No. 1 well into the Beaufort Sea.
J.W. Dalton No. 1 presented an extreme situation, where 300 feet of coastline disappeared in one storm, but hundreds of abandoned wells dot the state, most drilled decades ago by the U.S. Navy or the U.S. Geological Survey in what was originally the Naval Petroleum Reserve and is now NPR-A.
Following cleanup of J.W. Dalton well in 2005, BLM began prioritizing wells by the likelihood each could become an environmental hazard within the next three to five years because of coastal erosion.
BLM, an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior, chose three wells for immediate consideration: East Teshekpuk No. 1, Atigaru Point No. 1 and Drew Point No. 1.
Drilling on the 11,535-foot Atigaru Point No. 1 well ran from December 1976 to March 1977, while drilling on the 7,946-foot Drew Point No. 1 well ran from December 1977 to January 1978.
Both wells were later partially plugged and filled with diesel fuel to keep the well bores from freezing in winter, Svejnoha said.
The remediation effort on the wells involves clearing out 15,000 gallons of diesel from each well and excavating the onsite reserve pits used for storing drilling mud and cuttings.
“What we’re trying to do is just prevent discharge of the reserve pit contents to the environment,” Svejnoha said.
Contracts for Atigaru Point No. 1 and Drew Point No. 1 have not yet gone out to bid.
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