BP May Resume Alaskan Pipeline Production Soon

By H.JOSEF HEBERT

PRUDHOE BAY, Alaska – Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne got his first look Wednesday at BP’s pipeline corrosion at Prudhoe Bay as one of the company’s senior executives said a way might be found to return to full oil production before having to replace 16 miles of pipes.

David Peattie, a vice president at London-based BP PLC, said the company hopes to begin constructing the new pipeline system early next year and complete it in several months. But he said full production, to 400,000 barrels a day, might resume earlier than that.

The flow of Prudhoe Bay oil has been cut in half, to 200,000 barrels a day, because of the pipe corrosion that surfaced in early August. The western leg of the pipeline system has resumed production by bypassing the damaged pipes.

But Peattie, who accompanied Kempthorne to the site where corrosion caused an oil spill in early August, said a similar bypass strategy could result in production returning to normal in the eastern leg as well. He said the company also was testing the corrosion-troubled pipes to determine whether they could be patched temporarily and meet federal requirements.

Peattie declined to estimate how quickly full production might resume with the temporary fixes.

"The commitment is to do it as quickly as possible," BP Alaska spokesman Daren Beaudo said.

Kempthorne, on a three-day visit to Alaska’s oil fields, toured the ConocoPhillips Alpine oil field 60 miles west of Prudhoe Bay on Wednesday and then flew to the BP facility.

He visited the pipeline site where BP in early August discovered extensive corrosion along a three-mile stretch, forcing a shutdown of production that would later partially resume. BP officials have acknowledged they did not test the pipes adequately using a so-called pig device which is run through a pipe to gauge corrosion.

The company relied on ultrasound tests. "The most obvious gap in the system was a the lack of a consistent pigging program," Beaudo said.

Beaudo said that one leg of the pipeline system had been corrosion-tested using a pig device in 1992 and 1998. The other leg had never been tested that way, he said.

Operators of the ConocoPhillips facility told Kempthorne that its practice was to run pipeline pig tests every two years.

Later, visiting the Trans Alaska pipeline site, officials told Kempthorne that tests to monitor corrosion inside the pipe were conducted every three years and cleaning-pig devices were run through every two weeks.

"We have a very aggressive pigging program," said Jim Johnson, a vice president of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System.

ConocoPhillips’ Alpine field is the most modern on the North Slope and uses directional drilling to limit the surface footprint of its drilling wells. Also, while the Prudhoe Bay pipes are 30 years old, those linking the Alpine field to Prudhoe are only six to seven years old.

ConocoPhillips, co-owner of the Alpine field with Anadarko Petroleum Corp., plans aggressive exploration on the North Slope, holding significant leases in the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, including one on the verge of production.

"We are going to be active on the exploration side," said George Storaker, vice president for North Slope operations for ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc. He said the Alpine field, which produced 130,000 barrels a day, "is on the decline" and new resources must be developed.

ConocoPhillips has its eye on the NPRA, an area the government set aside in 1923 for energy development, including the potential 2 billion barrels of oil beneath an environmentally sensitive area near Lake Teshekpuk. Environmentalists want to keep the area off-limits to oil companies.

Kempthorne on Tuesday took a helicopter ride over the lake area that has become the focus of a new dispute over Alaska oil drilling. He said afterward that he’s convinced a restricted drilling plan can accommodate energy development and wildlife protection.

"We’re set to go forward," said Kempthorne, whose department will sell oil leases to nearly 500,000 acres north and east of Lake Teshekpuk late next month. It will probably be a decade before oil is actually taken from the area.

The lease plan includes limits on surface footprints, creation of corridors that will be off-limits to drilling to allow for caribou migration and buffers to protect geese molting areas, said Henri Bisson, the Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska director.