Development and Demonstration of Mobile, Small Footprint Exploration and Development Well System for Arctic Unconventional Gas Resources (ARCGAS)

Abstract

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 Alaska's numerous shallow, unconventional gas reservoirs (carbonaceous shales, coalbeds, tight gas sands). This is because the high costs associated with utilizing the existing conventional oil and gas 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 resources 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 diamond-drilling rigs. From 1998 to 2000, Teck Cominco Alaska employed some of these technologies at their Red Dog Mine site in an effort to quantify a large unconventional gas resource in the vicinity of the mine. However, some of the methods employed were not fully developed andmore » required additional refinement in order to be used in a cost effective manner for rural arctic exploration. In an effort to offset the high cost of developing a new, low-cost exploration methods, the US Department of Energy, National Petroleum Technology Office (DOE-NPTO), partnered with the Nana Regional Corporation and Teck Cominco on a technology development program beginning in 2001. Under this DOE-NPTO project, a team comprised of the NANA Regional Corporation (NANA), Teck Cominco Alaska and Advanced Resources International, Inc. (ARI) have been able to adapt drilling technology developed for the mineral industry for use in the exploration of unconventional gas in rural Alaska. These techniques have included the use of diamond drilling rigs that core small diameter (< 3.0-inch) holes coupled with wireline geophysical logging tools and pressure transient testing units capable of testing in these slimholes.« less