ConocoPhillips sets new records with high-tech North Slope drilling

ConocoPhillips has set new Alaska and North America records again for drilling long “extended-reach” horizontal production wells at its CD 5 project on the North Slope, the company said Sept. 23. Both wells were drilled in July by Doyon Drilling Co. with its Rig 25, company spokesperson Patty Sullivan said.

The new Alaska record for the longest single horizontal well is 32,468 feet drilled in well CD5-98 at CD-5, with the footage including the horizontal lateral producing well drilled as well as the vertical well from the surface.

A new North American record for the longest combined footage was also set in the same well at 47,828 feet of combined footage but including two lateral producing wells along with the vertical well to the surface, Sullivan said in an interview. It is known as a “multi-lateral” well because it has the two lateral horizontal wells drilled to different internals in the reservoir from the vertical well.

The top 10 Alaska horizontal production wells were all drilled at CD 5, she said.

CD 5 is a production pad adjacent to ConocoPhillips’ producing Alpine field near the Colville River, west of the larger Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk River fields in the central North Slope. While CD 5 is within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, and near the Colville which is the eastern boundary of the NPR-A with state of Alaska lands, the subsurface mineral rights, and production royalties, are held by Arctic Slope Regional Corp., a regional development corporation owned by the aboriginal Inupiat people of northern Alaska.

CD-5 has become a kind of showcase for new drilling technology demonstrating not only the extensive horizontal distances drillers can achieve but also the efficiencies of the new types of wells. The multilateral wells save money because two producing laterals share the vertical well and its costs. The long horizontal wells reach out laterally for several miles from the surface location of the drill rig and production pad. They can tap reservoir intervals to produce more oil without having to build additional surface infrastructure with drill pads, roads and pipelines.

Reducing the surface “footprint” lowers costs, which are high on the North Slope for most construction, and making small sections of reservoir economically viable that might not otherwise have been possible to produce. Use of the new technologies including horizontal drilling have allowed ConocoPhillips to reduce the per-well production costs at CD-5 from $65/bbl estimated when the project was developed to costs in the $30/bbl range, the company told analysts in a briefing in mid-2018.

With the experience gained ConocoPhillips hopes to produce Narwhal, a small accumulation found south of the Alpine field, with wells drilled from existing pads at the nearby Alpine field. The new drilling technology will also be employed at GMT-2, a new project ConocoPhillips is now constructing in the petroleum reserve west of CD-5. Because more underground reservoir can be reached laterally the costs of production per barrel are lower and the likely oil recovery at GMT-2 is increased. GMT-2 is now expected to produce 40,000 barrels per day because of the use of new technology. That’s up from 30,000 barrels per day to 35,000 barrels per day originally estimated.

Meanwhile, a new, more advanced drilling rig commissioned by ConocoPhillips is now en route to the North Slope, and it will advance the horizontal reach once again. The new Doyon 26 rig, also owned by Doyon Drilling, will begin operating in April, 2020 and will be able to drill 37,000 feet, or over seven miles, from the surface location of the rig. “That means that this new high-tech rig will be able to develop 154 square miles of reservoir from a 14-acre pad,” at the surface, Sullivan said. That’s up from about 55 miles of reservoir that could be reached in 2016 using rigs available at the time.

ConocoPhillips will use the new rig to develop Fiord West, a satellite oil accumulation within the Alpine field where access is difficult because a channel of the Colville separates it from the existing field infrastructure. Using Rig 26, ConocoPhillips will be able to tap Fiord West without building a bridge or new roads, pad and pipeline. The company plans to have Fiord West in production in late 2020 or 2021.