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New AOGCC commissioner has worked Cook Inlet and North Slope Mike Bill came to Alaska with ARCO, moved to BP with Prudhoe Bay alignment, worked on revisions to commission regulations from company side Kristen Nelson PNA Editor-in-Chief
Mike Bill, the new petroleum engineer commissioner at the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, has worked in the industry in Alaska since 1979, and been involved — from the company side — in a variety of the activities he will now regulate.
Bill went to work for ARCO in 1971 after earning a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He started in Texas, he told PNA in a Nov. 4 interview, and worked in Dallas, Midland and Denver City, on projects including small water floods, an early CO2 flood and miscible injection.
Came to Alaska with ARCO Bill had never been to Alaska when he came up on an interview/house-hunting trip in 1979, but, he said, “if you worked for ARCO at that time period, Alaska was the big star.
“That was part of my reason for going with ARCO, I eventually wanted to come to Alaska.” Prudhoe Bay development was anticipated, he said, when he joined ARCO.
When Bill came to Alaska, he worked first as ARCO’s co-owner representative for the Beluga River and Swanson River fields in Cook Inlet properties. In the early 1980s, Bill said, ARCO had a separate exploration company and he worked several lease sales, among them Yakutat and Mukluk in Harrison Bay.
On to Prudhoe Bay projects In about 1982 he began to work on Prudhoe Bay development. ARCO ran the eastern operating area and was getting ready to start up flow station No. 3 injection project. “That was the first miscible project on the slope,” Bill said. “It was essentially a pilot, although a large pilot.”
He was also involved in water flood planning for the water flood that began in 1984 and after water flood started up, supervised engineers involved with wells at flow station No. 3.
When ARCO reorganized in 1991, Bill became a staff engineer.
“They flattened the organization,” he said, “and the particular supervision level that I was in disappeared.”
Grind and inject As a staff engineer, Bill became more involved with special projects, including waste disposal wells and grind and inject.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency permits Class I disposal wells, he said, for fluids — such as industrial waste — which are not necessarily associated with oil and gas activities, while the commission permits Class II activities, disposal of fluids associated with oil and gas production, particularly those brought to the surface in drilling.
Bill also worked on the grind and inject facility at Prudhoe. There had been a facility taking drilling waste in the western operating area, he said, known as CC2A, which was really the first grind and inject type operation on the slope.
The larger grind and inject facility at Prudhoe came about as a settlement of claims on reserve pit closedown, which needed a much larger facility, Bill said.
AOGCC regulations One of the special projects Bill was involved in, as one of ARCO’s representatives, was the 1990s rewrite of the commission’s regulations.
“I think we got an overall good set of regulations,” he said. “There’s always things that need to be fine tuned and clarified. And I’m sure you’ll see some of that in the future. There have been a few things already.”
When BP took over operation of all of the Prudhoe Bay field after the Phillips Petroleum Co. purchase of ARCO’s Alaska assets, Bill moved to BP as a staff engineer, working grind and inject and pre-startup activities at Northstar, particularly commissioning the Class I disposal well.
Bill also worked on regulatory interactions while at BP and did some work on safety valve issues at Prudhoe about a year ago, he said. Retired for five months Bill left BP last April when the company downsized and he accepted an enhanced separation program.
“I was retired for five months,” he said, but he wasn’t really ready to retire and started looking around.
“I knew of this opportunity and so I threw my name in the hat because of my past experience with the commission.”
Bill said he thought he was probably as prepared as anybody could be for what the commission does, but had found there was a lot more going on than he realized.
Some things, he said, he knew as applied to a specific project but not as applied generally or to other areas of the state. And, he said, it’s a whole different world in the inlet than when he was involved there for ARCO more than 20 years ago.
“It’s been interesting. It’s been a little intense,” he said.
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