ConocoPhillips Alaska has reached another milestone for its Willow project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska: On Aug. 14 the U.S. Bureau of Land Management released the final environmental impact statement for the Willow master development plan.
BLM said it has identified Alternative B, ConocoPhillips’s proposal, and Module Delivery Option 3, as the preferred alternative. The project is at the company’s Bear Tooth unit, west of currently producing Mooses Tooth.
Willow would have a peak production in excess of 160,000 barrels per day and a processing capacity of 200,000 bpd, BLM said, with an anticipated 30-year life.
In the initial draft EIS, published last September, BLM said ConocoPhillips expected peak production at Willow at up to 130,000 bpd; in the supplemental draft EIS, published in March, the agency cited the peak 160,000 bpd figure.
Total expected production over the life of the project, 590 million barrels, remains the same under both volume projections.
ROD next
BLM said a record of decision would be signed no sooner than 30 days after the Federal Register publication.
ConocoPhillips Alaska spokeswoman Natalie Lowman told Petroleum News in an Aug. 17 email that the company is “pleased that the FEIS has been completed, and we look forward to the Record of Decision so we can proceed with the project planning.”
BLM said once the ROD has been signed, ConocoPhillips can submit applications to build drill sites, a central processing facility, an operations center pad, gravel roads, ice roads and ice pads, an airstrip, a freshwater reservoir, an ice bridge across the Colville River to transfer facility modules into NPR-A, pipelines and a gravel mine site.
Lowman said the FEIS “is the critical part in the process to permit and construct the Willow project.”
“In response to public involvement during earlier steps in the permitting process, we made changes that improve the overall project, most notably to the transportation of processing facility modules. We believe the BLM and cooperating agencies have done a robust, thorough, and extensive review of the project, and ConocoPhillips appreciates all the hard work it took to get to this point.”
ConocoPhillips said in July that it expects a final investment decision on the project in 2021 and first oil in 2025-26.
Second NPR-A development
ConocoPhillips has been producing from Greater Mooses Tooth 1 in NPR-A since 2018. That development is smaller, with an estimated peak production of 30,000 from GMT1, and 35,000-40,000 from a second drill site at GMT2, currently under construction. GMT does not have its own processing facilities. Its crude oil is processed through the existing Alpine facilities at the Colville River unit.
Willow, by contrast, will have as many as five pads and its own processing facility.
ConocoPhillips announced the Willow discovery in January 2017 and said at that time that depending on appraisal drilling and the chosen development scenario, the field could produce at a rate of up to 100,000 bpd.
A test at the Tinmiaq No. 2 well flowed 3,200 bpd of light 44 degree API oil over a 12-hour period, the company said in announcing the discovery.
“Willow’s proximity to existing infrastructure improves the economic viability of the discovery. Development of Willow, a potential multi-billion dollar investment, could provide thousands of jobs during construction and could generate substantial revenue for the federal government, state, North Slope Borough, and communities in the NPR-A,” ConocoPhillips Alaska President Joe Marushack said in the discovery announcement.
Since 2017, exploration drilling has continued.
This April, Matt Fox, ConocoPhillips executive vice president and COO, talked about Willow in the company’s first quarter earnings call. He said Tinmiaq drilling results this winter were what was “expected” and said Willow development is on track.
“We’re working through Willow, and we’re in the concept selection stage just now. We have a timeline that would get us to the end of this year with the opportunity to select the concept. And by that, I mean, how big a facility do we build, how many drill centers do we have and so on,” Fox said.
Changes from DEIS
Following publication of the draft EIS last August, ConocoPhillips proposed design updates and a supplement to the draft EIS was issued in March. Substantial changes included a third sealift module delivery option (there had been objection to the first two options which required construction of gravel islands); a constructed freshwater reservoir; and up to three boat ramps for subsistence access.
ConocoPhillips’ proposal, which BLM identified as the preferred alternative in the FEIS, extends an all-season gravel road from GMT2 southwest toward the project area and has gravel roads connecting all project facilities, including the Willow Processing Facility, Willow Operations Center, airstrip and all five drill sites.
There would be 37 miles of gravel road and seven bridges, with infield pipelines connecting individual drill sites to the Willow Processing Facility and export/import pipelines connecting the processing facility to existing infrastructure on the North Slope.
Nine sealift barges are expected to be required to bring prefabricated modules to the North Slope. The new option ConocoPhillips developed for module delivery eliminates the proposed gravel island and would deliver modules to Oliktok Dock and use existing Kuparuk gravel roads and ice roads to move modules to the project area using an ice bridge to cross the Colville River near Ocean Point.
