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The Explorers 2024: ConocoPhillips turning to Titan this year
Bear No. 1 well from 2023 was dry hole; company stays close to home this year
Eric Lidji for Petroleum News
Even though the slowest days of the pandemic appear to be past, ConocoPhillips has yet to fully regain the enthusiasm for exploration it consistently demonstrated before 2020.
Since the late 1990s, the global upstream company has been the standard bearer of North Slope exploration, steadily advancing infrastructure west over a quarter century. This winter, the company seems to be focusing its exploration energy on the Fiord West Kuparuk participating area in the northwest corner of the Colville River unit.
The main project in that area is Titan No. 1. The pilot well would "evaluate subsurface data to support continued oil and gas development," according to the company.
The proposed Fiord West Kuparuk Titan 1 pilot well would be located some 5 miles north of the CD5 pad but makes use of its infrastructure. The proposed well is located in the northwest corner of the Colville River unit and would require some 9 miles of new ice roads extending from the existing gravel road connecting CD5 to the larger road grid.
Along the ice road, ConocoPhillips would build two 500-foot by 500-foot ice support pads for equipment and personnel, and a 700-foot by 700-foot ice drilling-pad on Kuukpik Corp. land on Section 17 of Township 12 North-Range 4 East. The road includes spurs to nearby lakes.
Iapetus, Char The current program builds upon exploration work undertaken by ConocoPhillips and its predecessors more than 15 years ago, before new infrastructure eased access to the area.
ConocoPhillips predecessor ARCO Alaska Inc. conducted the Fiord West 3D survey nearby in 2000. The Alpine oil field at the Colville River unit came online later that year.
ConocoPhillips requested expansions of the unit boundaries in 2002 and 2004. The 2004 expansion added 17,149 acres at the northwest corner of the unit, toward the area covered by the survey. As part of its application, the company committed to drilling two wells in the expansion acreage -- Iapetus No. 1 in early 2005 and Iapetus No. 2 in early 2006.
ConocoPhillips drilled the first Iapetus exploration well in early 2005 to a measured depth of 9,300 feet and a true vertical depth of 7,986 feet. The company suggested at the time that the prospect could be a potential Alpine satellite but ultimately plugged and abandoned the well. Although the well was relatively close to infrastructure, the lack of a direct road made work expensive. It's "tough to get a rig up here," ConocoPhillips Alaska's Vice President of Exploration and Land Rick Mott said at the time. The project also required a coastal ice pad because "the prospect straddles the onshore and offshore."
Despite cost concerns, ConocoPhillips returned to the area in the 2007-2008 exploration season, drilling Char 1 a mile south of Iapetus. The company drilled the well to a measured depth of 7,697 feet and a true vertical depth of 7,647 feet. It encountered the top of the Nanushuk at 3,864 feet, the Kuparuk D at 7,217 feet, the Kuparuk C at 7,252 feet, the top of the Nuiqsut at 7,319 feet and the base of the Nuiqsut at 7,402 feet.
Production was tested in the Nechelik in three flow periods, for a total of nine days, from March 18 through March 24, 2008, with production ranging from as little as 12 barrels per day to as much as 358 bpd. A single flow test period in the Kuparuk in early 2008 produced from 831 bpd to 3,917 bpd. The well was ultimately plugged and abandoned after testing, likely due to the lack of infrastructure in the area west of the Colville River.
CD5 ConocoPhillips commissioned the CD5 pad in 2015, after more than a decade of regulatory delays. The delays involved a proposed bridge across the Nigliq Channel of the Colville River, which separates state and federal lands on the North Slope.
The CD5 pad was an important milestone in North Slope development, allowing ConocoPhillips to more easily cross into the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
The project generated considerable delays at the time, specifically regarding the location of a proposed bridge across the Nigliq Channel. The company began permitting the project in 2005 but withdrew its application in 2008 in the face of local opposition from officials in the North Slope Borough and the village of Nuiqsut. After working with those parties on a new location for the proposed bridge, ConocoPhillips submitted a new application in 2009 only to be rejected by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers the following year. ConocoPhillips successfully appealed, leading to regulatory approval in late 2011, project sanctioning in 2012 and initial construction activities in 2014.
The CD5 pad is in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska on land owned by Kuukpik Corp., the village corporation for Nuiqsut, with mineral rights owned largely by Arctic Slope Regional Corp. The project marked the first production inside NPR-A.
ConocoPhillips viewed the CD5 project as a critical step in its decades-long effort to push North Slope development to the west. In the nine years since CD5 came online and allowed the company to cross the Colville River, ConocoPhillips has advanced several NPR-A projects, including Greater Mooses Tooth, Bear Tooth and the Willow project.
ConocoPhillips conducted the Alpine 3D survey in the area in late 2009 and early 2010 but has mostly focused on other sections of its leasehold in the years since. The proposed Titan 1 well site is approximately 800 feet south of the Char No. 1 exploration well.
In late 2018, the state approved the CD5X2 expansion project, which included as many as 10 new wells from the pad, as well as associated infrastructure. The company received a drilling permit in January 2024 for the CD5-32X exploration well from the pad. The well had not yet been reported as completed by the time the Explorers went to press in April.
Fiord West Kuparuk The state approved the new Fiord West Kuparuk participating area in early 2019, covering much of this previous exploration play. ConocoPhillips was planning considerable work in the area before the disruption of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 but managed to complete the CD2X expansion project, adding 21 well slots and converting six existing well slots at the CD2 pad for extended reach drilling activities.
Bear No. 1 ConocoPhillips returned to exploration last year with the Bear No. 1 well, breaking a multiyear hiatus attributed to the pandemic and to a tax-related ballot initiative.
The company had commissioned a seismic survey over the proposed Bear exploration near the village of Nuiqsut in 2017 and 2018 and finally completed the Bear No. 1 well in early 2023. The well was drilled at the non-unitized state lease ADL 393519.
Having satisfied a key work commitment, ConocoPhillips subsequently received rental reduction on 74 leases covering 136,197 acres in the area. The block is adjacent to Santos' Oil Search (Alaska) leases, including its Stirrup and Horseshoe projects. The Bear project is widely understood to be ConocoPhillips' contribution to that same play.
ConocoPhillips Alaska President Erec Isaacson previously described the Bear 1 well as a Brookian topset play. Reflecting on that, veteran Alaska oilman Bill Armstrong told Petroleum News, "A Brookian topset is exactly what we drilled at Pikka, Horseshoe, Stirrup, Mitquq and (ConocoPhillips) drilled at Willow. (ConocoPhillips) knows what they are doing. I give the Bear well a high chance of success based on what we know."
Stirrup No. 1 penetrated the Nanushuk reservoir and encountered 75 net feet of pay. The well flowed at a stabilized rate of 3,520 barrels of oil per day, one of the highest flow rates of any Nanushuk single-stage stimulation of a vertical well on the North Slope.
Armstrong Oil and Gas drilled the Horseshoe 1 and 1A wells during the winter of 2016 and 2017. The wells confirmed the Nanushuk play in the Pikka-Horseshoe area as one of the largest onshore conventional hydrocarbon discoveries in the country in 30 years.
Reporting on Bear No. 1 in its annual Securities and Exchange Commission filing for 2023, issued in early 2024, ConocoPhillips wrote: "no commercial hydrocarbons were found and the well was deemed a dry hole and permanently plugged and abandoned."
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