ConocoPhillips to begin production at Alaska Narwhal project in 2022

ConocoPhillips will begin initial production in 2022 from Narwhal, an undeveloped oil deposit south of the producing Alpine field, and will move toward full development in 2026, a company spokesperson said.

No production estimates or resource estimates were given.

"We have drilled two horizontal wells, one producer and one injector, from CD4, targeting the Narwhal reservoir," ConocoPhillips spokesperson Rebecca Boys said in an email Nov. 18. CD4 is an existing drill site in the Alpine field.

Boys said the company plans to initiate production and injection to support production from the wells in 2021 once the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas approves the Narwhal participating area.

The company plans to further develop Narwhal from a new drill site.

"CD8 is a new drill site that will come online later in the decade subject to stakeholder engagement and permit approvals," she said.

Vincent Lelarge, ConocoPhillips' North Slope asset development manager, said the company is planning the new drill site in 2026. Lelarge's remarks were to an industry conference in Anchorage Nov. 17.

Oil and gas from Narwhal will be processed in existing production facilities in the Alpine field.

Long-distance horizontal wells

ConocoPhillips has been studying development of Narwhal for several years. The accumulation is relatively small and the company has worked on plans to produce it, or at least part of it, with long-distance horizontal wells drilled from the existing Alpine drill site CD4, avoiding the cost of building a stand-alone new drill site.

The company is pursuing that strategy in developing another deposit in the Alpine field, Fiord West, completely with horizontal wells drilled from existing field facilities. Another undeveloped small deposit, Nuna, which is northeast of Alpine and near the Kuparuk River field, is planned for development, but Lelarge gave no timetable in his remarks Nov. 17.

Production and injection tests had been carried out at Narwhal, with the two horizontal wells drilled earlier, but ConocoPhillips concluded that the entire reservoir cannot be drained efficiently with horizontal wells.

That led to plans for the new CD8 drill site that will be positioned farther south in a location to fully produce the deposit.

ConocoPhillips has been drilling record-breaking long-distance horizontal wells in and around the Alpine field for several years. Some of the wells that will tap Alpine West, for example, will exploit reservoir targets seven miles from the surface location of the drill rig.

The technology, however, is not without challenges. Geologic conditions can sometimes lead to a collapse of the horizontal well bore or drilling equipment becoming stuck, requiring expensive redrilling, delays and cost increases.

String of discoveries

Narwhal is part of a string of discoveries in geologic trends extending south from the Alpine field along the Colville River and including parts of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

Some of the discoveries, in the Nanushuk, an oil-bearing formation discovered six years ago, are of significant size. One of them, Pikka, is a potential billion-barrel field being developed by Oil Search, a Papua New Guinea company, and Repsol, based in Madrid.

Oil Search and Repsol are studying possible development of Horseshoe, another discovery farther south in the Nanushuck formation.

ConocoPhillips is also doing development planning for Willow, a major discovery in the NPR-A west of the Alpine field. A federal court decision earlier this year has delayed Willow after a legal challenge was brought by conservation and tribal groups.

The company is working with the US Bureau of Land Management, which administers the NPR-A, on resolving issues stemming from the court decision.