Remote, Slimhole Arctic Testing and Exploration

By

G.J. Koperna, Jr., J. Kelafant (Advance Resources International), P. Glavinovich (NANA Development Corporation), G. Booth (G.G. Booth & Associates), and R.P. Lindsey (U.S Department of Energy- National Petroleum Technology Office)

Traditionally, oil and gas field technology development in Alaska has focused on the high-cost, high-productivity oil and gas fields of the North Slope and Cook Inlet, with little or no attention given to the shallow, low-cost drilling and testing of economically more marginal unconventional gas reservoirs. Existing drilling and completion technology infrastructure combined with the typical remoteness and environmental sensitivity of many of Alaska’s unconventional gas plays, renders the cost of exploring for and producing unconventional gas in Alaska can be prohibitive.

To address these operational challenges and promote the development of Alaska’s large unconventional gas resource base, new low-cost methods of obtaining critical reservoir parameters prior to drilling and completing more costly production wells are required. Encouragingly, low-cost coring, logging, and in-situ testing technologies have already been developed by the hard rock mining industry in Alaska and worldwide, where an extensive service industry employs highly portable mining rigs.

Under a Department of Energy, National Petroleum Technology Office (DOE-NPTO) project, a team comprised of the Northwestern Alaska Native Association Corporation (NANA), Cominco Alaska and Advanced Resources International, Inc. have been able to adapt some of these mineral investigative techniques for use in the exploration of unconventional gas in rural Alaska. These techniques have included the use of small diameter coring for source rock recovery and gas desorption measurement testing as well as wireline geophysical logging and pressure transient testing in these same slimholes.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90008©2002 AAPG Pacific Section/SPE Western Region Joint Conference of Geoscientists and Petroleum Engineers, Anchorage, Alaska, May 18–23, 2002.