Alaska's North Slope has been in flux during the past few years. Long-established firms have morphed into new forms, and fresh faces have joined the hunt for oil and gas. Too, intriguing provinces are inviting bold exploration, efforts that are invigorated by sophisticated technologies and today's hearty product prices. In early 1999, North Slope dynamics changed abruptly when BP Amoco and Arco announced a plan to merge. Briefly, it appeared that the North Slope would become the near-exclusive domain of one multinational firm. But, regulators eventually decreed that the merger would concentrate ownership to an unacceptable degree. Ultimately, BP bought Arco, but sold the assets of Arco Alaska Inc. to Phillips Petroleum Co. In early 2000, Philips paid $7 billion for about 1.9 billion barrels equivalent in proved reserves; 1.1 million net exploratory acres; a 22.3% interest in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS); and Arco's crude-oil shipping fleet. The buy has remade the North Slope hierarchy. "The past few years have been ones of tremendous change in the Alaskan oil patch," says Kevin Meyers, president and chief executive officer of Phillips Alaska Inc., and previous president and chief operating officer of Arco Alaska Inc. "Operations that had been part of Arco went into the Phillips family." Directly on the heels of the merger, a far-reaching agreement was forged, says Meyers, one that has had immediate and quite beneficial consequences for the Slope. BP, Phillips and Exxon Mobil agreed to align their interests in the Greater Prudhoe Bay Unit-in the oil rim, the gas cap, and all the various satellite accumulations-to arrive at one ownership decimal for each company from grassroots to granite. This was no small feat, as the original unitization agreement for Prudhoe Bay was inordinately complex. It took the 16 initial participants more than two years to hammer out the 1,200-page, two-volume contract. In the realignment, BP was elected as the single operator of Prudhoe Bay, replacing the BP/Arco dichotomy that had split North America's largest field since its inception, and Phillips retained Arco's Greater Kuparuk and Alpine operations. These changes had been discussed for years, but it took Phillips' entry onto the Slope to finally spur action. The outcome, between the acquisition and alignment agreement, catapulted Phillips into the position of the largest producer of oil and gas in Alaska. Phillips added 330,000 barrels of North Slope oil per day to the 27,000 barrels equivalent it was already producing in Cook Inlet. Phillips now owns a 36.2% working interest in the Greater Prudhoe Bay Unit; 55.2% in the Greater Kuparuk area, and 78% in Alpine. For its part, BP assumed the mantle of Alaska's largest operator, handling all of Prudhoe Bay, Milne Point, Endicott, Niakuk, Point McIntyre and Badami fields. The company shifted from an ownership of 51% of the oil and 20% of the gas in Prudhoe Bay to a 27% interest in both the oil and gas. "Our gas reserves increased substantially-essentially we gave up current oil production for future gas production," says Ronnie Chappell, BP Alaska's director of external communications. BP's net oil production dropped by about 50,000 barrels per day from a premerger level of 350,000 barrels per day. The benefits of alignment have surpassed expectations, says Meyers. "Development of several of the satellite fields had been stalled pending commercial agreements on facility sharing and so on. Now, a whole host of satellites are coming on production at Prudhoe Bay." Presently, satellites account for about 4,000 barrels per day at Prudhoe, and by the end of the year that number will approach 40,000 barrels per day, thanks to additions from Aurora, Polaris and Borealis fields. "The alignment solved almost all the commercial issues that were holding up development." Today, the Greater Prudhoe Bay Unit produces about 600,000 barrels per day, about a third of its peak production of 1.5 million barrels daily, says Chappell. The venerable field, initially estimated to contain some 9.5 billion barrels of oil, will comfortably recover close to 14 billion barrels. While Prudhoe Bay dominates the North Slope, it is far from the sole focus of either company. Rising oil prices, staggering leaps in arctic drilling and completion technologies, and fresh understandings of the subsurface have revitalized the entire region. All stripes of projects are under way, and spending levels are surging. This year, BP expects to devote $800 million to the North Slope, up from $650 million last year, says Chappell. The company plans 110 to 120 reservoir penetrations in Prudhoe Bay; it has a three-well program in at its Trailblazer project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska; and it plans to participate in some Kuparuk satellites with Phillips. The jewel in this year's program, however, is the anticipated flow of first oil from the 176-million-barrel Northstar accumulation. That development, the first commercial field in federal waters offshore Alaska, is expected to begin production in the fourth quarter. Peak rate will be 65,000 barrels of oil per day, in which BP will own a 98% interest. "We anticipate that we will be producing 350,000 net barrels of oil per day on the North Slope by the end of this year," says Chappell. Phillips has devoted substantial resources to the Slope as well. "Arco was spending about $500 million per year when it was drilling wells and installing facilities for Alpine Field," says Meyers. Just in exploration and production in Alaska, Phillips expects to spend in excess of $625 million this year. The company is mounting an extremely aggressive program on the Slope. "We've ramped up exploration," says Meyers. "This year, we have already completed 12 penetrations, and we expect to complete two more wells off gravel for a total of 14 penetrations." In comparison, Arco Alaska drilled six penetrations (new wells and sidetracks) in 1999 and nine in 2000. This winter, Phillips also shot more than 1,000 square miles of 3-D seismic, around Alpine, in NPR-A, and in the Foothills area. Early results are heartening. Phillips just announced the discovery of Palm Field, a 35-million-barrel satellite accumulation that extends Kuparuk to the west. It also announced five successful wells and a sidetrack on its NPR-A leases. Another leg of its expansion is its progress at West Sak, a heavy oil formation located in the Greater Kuparuk area, estimated to contain 16 billion barrels of oil in place. Arco had drilled about 30 wells at West Sak and was producing about 3,000 barrels per day. The company was struggling to find a production technique that would offer robust economics at low oil prices, however. Phillips believes that it may have hit a solution in multilateral wells. The company has drilled three wells, with two horizontal laterals per well, and has been able to produce these at initial rates as high as 1,000 barrels per day. That's four times the rate of a traditional vertical well. As it continues to prove up the technology, Phillips plans to ramp up the multilateral program this year and next. "We're not yet ready to declare victory, but we're hoping that by the end of the decade we could see production of 50,000 to 75,000 barrels per day from West Sak," says Meyers. These efforts, coupled with the aforementioned satellite developments, ongoing enhanced recovery projects in Kuparuk and Prudhoe Bay, and Alpine Field production, have wrought wonderful results. This year, Phillips expects to produce almost 400,000 net barrels equivalent per day in Alaska. "Last year, on a pro forma basis, taking the heritage Arco and the heritage Phillips assets in Alaska, we posted an increase in net production from 1999 levels. For the first time in 10 years, our production actually increased on the North Slope." What's even more exciting is that Phillips' 2001 production will be up 10% from 2000 levels. The company plans to hold production steady in the 375,000- to 400,000-barrel-per-day range for the foreseeable future. Anadarko Petroleum Corp., Phillips' partner in Alpine Field, offers another perspective of the changing North Slope paradigm. By North Slope standards, Anadarko is a relative newcomer. "We were attracted to Alaska because of its world-class petroleum potential, and a business environment that offered us the opportunity to earn a fair return," says John N. Seitz, president and chief operating officer. The Houston independent entered Alaska in 1993 when it joined with Exxon to drill a wildcat at Thetis Island in the Beaufort Sea. Although the well encountered non-commercial amounts of oil, Anadarko went on to partner with Arco Alaska and Union Texas Petroleum in the 1994 discovery of Alpine Field. The Arco/Anadarko relationship expanded, and today Anadarko and Phillips work together in projects such as Fiord, other Alpine satellites, and at NPR-A. The company has made individual moves as well, advancing into new areas. It asserted its presence in a state lease sale held in June 1998, in which it spent $8.1 million net for 108,000 acres. The majority of those leases lie south of Kuparuk in the Tarn Trend; others are southeast of Prudhoe Bay Field. Anadarko bid alone on 26 tracts and was high bidder on 20. It also bid jointly with Fina Inc. on nine tracts, winning six. Adding to that, Anadarko bid both with Phillips and alone on some NPR-A leases in 1999, and it picked up a number of gas-prone parcels in the southern portion of the North Slope areawide sale, held in November 2000. This year, Anadarko will spend $90 million in Alaska, of which about $50 million is devoted to exploration, says Seitz. "Next year, we'll likely spend more, perhaps in the $125-million range." The North Slope accounts for almost the entire Alaska budget, although Anadarko does have additional gas discoveries and exploration prospects in Cook Inlet. Indeed, Anadarko is preparing to join the exclusive club of North Slope operators. The company has committed to a two-year contract on a Nabors drilling rig. "We have multiple prospects to chose from, ranging from development to delineation to oil wildcats and gas wildcats," says Seitz. "We don't know yet which location we'll drill, but we're working hard to make that decision this summer." Foothills gas Where Anadarko has really caught attention is in the Foothills gas play. The company stepped in early, and jump-started exploration in the region after a 30-year hiatus. "Our preference is to find oil, because it can be brought to market sooner," says Seitz. "However, we see the potential for giant or supergiant gas fields to be found in the Foothills area." The Foothills region lies south of the Umiat Baseline and north of the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, stretching from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the east to NPR-A on the west. Wells were initially drilled in the Foothills in the 1960s, but after Prudhoe Bay was discovered industry attention narrowed to the coastal plain. Indeed, the Foothills area, which looks very much like the slope of the Rockies, is strongly gas-prone. Thrust faults and anticlinal folds dominate the country, which is particularly chewed up near the Brooks Range. Accumulations in thrust-faulted anticlines were found in 1969 at Kavik and Kemik fields, near ANWR's western boundary, in areas of relatively high thermal maturity. "Industry had some past success in finding gas in the Foothills, but gas was totally worthless at the time," says Seitz. "We stepped back in to look for both oil and gas, but our studies indicate that gas is more likely to occur than oil." In 1998, the company signed a landmark agreement with Arctic Slope Regional Corp., a native corporation that holds about one-third of the lands in the general Foothills area. The deal granted Anadarko exploration rights to 2.1 million acres of ASRC lands, as well as rights to an additional 1 million acres of Native-selected lands. From that million acres, ASRC can select 240,000 acres under the terms of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. More recently, Anadarko has added two partners to this agreement, BP and Alberta Energy Co. Ltd. Each company has a third interest, and Anadarko retains operatorship. Anadarko is early in the evaluation process of the ASRC lands. It already suspects that very large structural traps lie beneath some of the leases, and this past winter the company shot both 2-D and 3-D proprietary seismic to help establish drilling prospects. "Our technical work will be used by ASRC to make some of its selections, and it will lrefine prospects generated by the field work and subsurface and seismic information," says Seitz. Clearly, the hunt for gas is now in full swing. The state of Alaska's Department of Natural Resources held its first areawide Foothills lease sale in May. The state has been actively promoting oil and gas activity on its lands, launching its areawide leasing program in 1998. "We're trying to make as much land as possible available for exploration," says Bill Van Dyke, petroleum manager. The May sale netted the state $10.7 million for 170 leases covering approximately 970,000 acres, says Jim Hanson, lease sale manager. Eight firms bid on the tracts, which are 5,760 acres each and carry 10-year terms. The broad interest in the Foothills sale was heartening, says Hanson. "The last time any part of this area was in a lease sale was in 1993. At one of those sales, Arco bought all eight leases that were offered; at the other, no bids were received on the offered tracts. This sale also was the furthest south that state acreage has been made available on the Slope." Calgary-based Petro-Canada won a $2.5-million bid for 323,000 acres in 56 tracts; Unocal Corp. had the highest winning bid, paying nearly $3 million for 18 tracts. Partners Anadarko and Alberta Energy picked up 207,000 acres for $2.2 million. Chevron, Phillips, and Burlington Resources also won acreage. This marked the first foray into Alaska state sales for both Petro-Canada and Burlington Resources, notes Hanson, and the first time Unocal had participated in a North Slope sale in some years. Anadarko welcomes the ensemble. "We were successful in the lease sale, and a number of other companies came in and competed against us," notes Seitz. "We see that as an extraordinarily encouraging sign. We were the lone explorer in the Foothills for a couple of years, and now industry has joined us." The harshness of the arctic environment makes cooperative efforts a necessity, he says. "The Foothills are a huge area, and companies need to work together to establish the logistical bases and supply infrastructure. We need to jointly shoot the seismic to establish the viability of some of these incredibly large prospects." Remote even by North Slope standards, the Foothills plays are very long-term prospects. "With all the stranded gas on the North Slope now, the tracts represent a $10.7-million bet that there will be a way to get that gas out," says Van Dyke. Propitious results Meanwhile, two seasons of drilling have passed since leases were let in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, and the results are beginning to hit the press. Phillips and Anadarko, partnering 78% and 22%, respectively, recently disclosed some details of their initial drilling efforts. Last winter and this winter, Phillips drilled six wells and a sidetrack in NPR-A, in an area between 15 and 25 miles southwest of Alpine Field. Five of those wells and the sidetrack hit hydrocarbons in three separate accumulations in the Alpine producing horizon. One test, the Spark #1A, tested 1,550 barrels of liquid hydrocarbons and 26.5 million cubic feet of gas per day. Another well, an unstimulated test, produced 360 barrels of liquids and 6.6 million cubic feet of gas per day. "That's an unstimulated rate, and we think that with an optimum completion the well will perform much better," says Meyers. "We encountered oil, gas and condensate in sands similar to those at Alpine. We've been very encouraged by what we've found so far in NPR-A, and we believe that we have commercial wells." NPR-A, the largest federal holding on the North Slope, is the size of Indiana. Warren Harding set the immense parcel aside in 1923, long before Alaska became the 49th state. The reserve lies tantalizingly to the west of, and on trend with, the major producing fields of the North Slope. Previously, NPR-A was estimated to contain conventionally recoverable resources of up to 5 billion barrels of oil and 21 trillion cubic feet of gas, but the U.S. Geological Survey is currently conducting a new assessment that will be released next year. Lease sales had been held on NPR-A in the early 1980s, but no commercial fields were developed, and vast reserve lay fallow until the discovery of Alpine Field was announced in 1996. That accumulation, directly on NPR-A's eastern border, contained a billion barrels of oil-in-place in a stratigraphically trapped Jurassic sandstone. The find fueled fresh attention on heretofore-overlooked intervals. With prodding from Alaska Governor Tony Knowles, the Clinton administration decided to hold a new lease sale after Alpine's discovery. The Bureau of Land Management, the steward for NPR-A, carved out a 4.6-million-acre area on the northeastern edge of the reserve. The BLM held its lease sale in May 1999, offering 425 tracts encompassing about 4 million acres. Six companies bid for nearly 870,000 acres, taking 133 of the tracts for winning high bids totaling $104.6 million. Arco Alaska and Anadarko Petroleum dominated the action, winning 573,000 acres. BP, bidding with various partners, leased approximately 147,000 acres. The northeastern-most corner of the available tracts, those closest to Alpine, generated the most enthusiasm. Needless to say, the discoveries have stoked interest. Too, the National Energy Policy Development Group, responsible for crafting the Bush administration's energy policy, recommended in its report this May that the president consider additional oil leasing in NPR-A. The response has been swift. At press time, the BLM announced that it plans to offer more acreage in NPR-A in two upcoming lease sales. In June 2002, the agency will again put up the 3 million acres that were included in the 1999 lease sale, but that received no bids. The BLM is also evaluating a portion of the reserve that lies northwest of the first planning area. Acreage in this region could be offered in 2004. "In the 1999 sale, leases were purchased all along the Alpine trend, far past where Phillips and Anadarko have been drilling," says Ken Boyd, oil and gas consultant and past director of the Division of Oil & Gas, Alaska Department of Natural Resources. "But, in the first lease sale, the whole northern part of the original study area was taken off the table, because it was considered too environmentally sensitive. The BLM needs to reconsider that decision. With new technology, companies can drill successfully in those areas without harming the environment." The ANWR debate Despite NPR-A's great size and prospectivity, when most people think of federal lands in Alaska they think of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The 19-million-acre refuge sits on the shores of the Beaufort Sea, immediately to the east of the North Slope infrastructure. The idea of developing ANWR for oil and gas is extremely unpopular with some people, says Boyd. "Opinions on ANWR are very polarized. Very few people seem to take an in-between stance, and there's no question it's an emotional issue." This slice of northeastern Alaska, the size of South Carolina, is one of the 16 natural refuges that were established or enlarged in Alaska under the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. In 1960, prior to that action, the Secretary of Interior Fred Seaton designated 8.9 million acres of land in what is now the refuge as the Arctic National Wildlife Range. The land was preserved because of its great diversity of vegetation and topography, and its relatively undisturbed condition. When ANWR was created in 1980, some 10 million acres to the south and west were added to the original wildlife range, and 8 million acres of the total were designated as wilderness. The most controversial part of the refuge is Area 1002, bounded on the west by the Canning River, on the east by the Aichilik River and on the north by the Arctic Ocean. The 1.5-million-acre Area 1002, which fell within the original boundaries of the wildlife range, was excepted from wilderness status. In light of Prudhoe Bay's discovery in 1968, Congress believed that it was prudent to assess both the area's wildlife resources and its oil and gas potential. Unquestionably, Area 1002 encompasses a sizeable chunk of the North Slope's unique habitat. Basically an open wetland, the coastal plain is marshy in summer and frozen in winter, its profile broken by pingoes and scrubby willows in the river bottoms. Constant wind is one of its most distinguishing features. Foothills, river flood plains and hilly coastal plains comprise more than 90% of the terrain. But, in the fleeting arctic summer, the coastal plain is crammed with wildlife. From late May to mid-June, the tundra is the calving area for the 130,000-strong Porcupine caribou herd; it is also the summer home to more than 130 migratory bird species. Year-round residents, adapted to survive the unbelievably harsh arctic winters, include six resident bird species, polar bear, muskoxen, wolves, arctic foxes, wolverines and ground squirrels. Nonetheless, ANWR is also the habitat of oil. Quite a number of oil-stained sands occur along the coast near Barter Island, an oil seep stains the beach, and the tundra is oil-soaked in places. President Bush's NEPD group calls Area 1002 "the single most promising prospect in the United States." In its May report, NEPD notes that peak production from ANWR could be between 1 and 1.3 million barrels of oil per day, and could account for more than 20% of all U.S. oil production. It recommends "that the President direct the Secretary of the Interior to work with Congress to authorize exploration and, if resources are discovered, development of the 1002 Area of ANWR." Exploration to date has been minimal. In 1984-85, a 2-D seismic survey by an industry consortium mapped Area 1002 with a three-by-six-mile grid. Beyond that, only one well has scratched the subsurface within the boundaries of ANWR, although drilling has occurred around it. In 1985, the famous KIC-1 was spudded about 14 miles southeast of Kaktovik. The Kaktovik Inupiat Corp., which holds 92,000 acres of private land within the refuge, leased the acreage to Chevron Corp. and BP for the test. The well reached a total depth of 15,193 feet in April 1986, but its results remain a closely guarded secret. Still, much can be inferred about ANWR's potential. In 1995, the U.S. Geological Survey began a three-year study to reassess Area 1002, which it had initially assessed in 1987. New field studies, well and sample data, and geophysical data were acquired, and the 1,400-mile existing seismic grid was recrunched and reinterpreted. Forty geologists spent three years scrutinizing everything that was known about ANWR, with the notable exception of the findings from the KIC well. The subsurface of the coastal plain is split diagonally by the Marsh Creek anticline, a large structural feature which runs northeast-southwest from the foothills of the Brooks Range to the seashore west of Kaktovik. The rocks on the northwest side of the anticline are generally horizontal and undeformed; those on the southeast side are folded and faulted. The 1998 assessment says that Area 1002 contains between 11.6- and 31.5 billion barrels of oil-in-place, with a mean of 20.7 billion barrels. Interestingly, nearly 85% of the refuge's potential is now thought to lie northwest of the anticline in the undeformed region, where the U.S.G.S. expects multiple accumulations containing in excess of 100 million barrels of oil apiece to occur. That's a significant shift from the 1987 analysis. "The increase in reserves in the undeformed area came from a combination of factors," says Kenneth Bird, the project chief of U.S.G.S. Alaska Petroleum Studies. "Primarily, the increase was related to the improved resolution from reprocessing the seismic data." The massaged data revealed many more opportunities for stratigraphic trapping in that area than the geologists had previously been able to postulate. Also, such nearby offshore discoveries as Hammerhead and Kuvlum and onshore finds Badami and Sourdough were either stratigraphic or combination traps. "On the reprocessed seismic, we saw indications of features that would allow those types of accumulations-small growth faults, rotated fault blocks and turbidite mound features." Too, rocks in the undeformed area are presently at their maximum burial, so the upper parts of that section contain reservoir rocks with marvelous properties. "The data all combined to raise our estimates." Still, don't expect a field like Prudhoe Bay, cautions Bird. "Most of the Triassic equivalents of the Prudhoe Bay reservoir are stripped off Area 1002. We expect to find those only along the southern part, which has been deeply buried and then uplifted. Reservoir character there will be much less than Prudhoe Bay." The new assessment also downgraded the potential in the deformed portion of Area 1002. "We had vitrinite reflectance and apatite fission track information that told us about the temperature to which those rocks have been exposed," says Bird. The rocks in the deformed area have been more deeply buried and heated, to a point that significantly reduces the chances of finding large oil accumulations. "The KIC-1 was drilled in the deformed area, on one of two very, very large structural closures. Both are just enormous features," he says. Nonetheless, the U.S.G.S. believes that these structures grew very late, primarily after the oil and gas had been generated and migrated through the area. The KIC structure has also been uplifted significantly, so the potential is more tipped toward gas than oil. "In the previous assessment, we had little information about the time these structures formed, and very little on the thermal history as well. But now, we see these as very risky structures because of their poor timing, thermal history and lack of quality reservoir units." Another large feature, to the south of the KIC structure, remains undrilled. "There are hints of the structures on the surface-some Jurassic-age strata outcrops in one of the nearby river beds, while Tertiary rocks occur everywhere else on the surface in the 1002 area." Certainly, if Area 1002 were open for leasing, the structures would still attract strong interest, if only because explorationists can't resist drilling whopping closures. And, Chevron and BP may have results from the KIC well that alter the present picture. "Only they know for sure," says Bird. A crossroads Oil fields pack Alaska state lands on its North Slope, producing from a variety of reservoirs in a variety of geologic plays, from Point Thomson on the east to Alpine on the west. To date, around 18 billion barrels of oil and 30 trillion cubic feet of gas have been discovered in this fabulous region. And, almost every barrel of Alaska's hefty production has flowed from the 120-mile slice of the Slope that belongs to the state. One exception is Alpine Field, the newest stand-alone development, which is on lands owned in part by Arctic Slope Regional Corp. and Kuukpik Village Corp. Yet, the federal government is the largest landowner on the North Slope. It owns the the 23-million-acre NPR-A and 19-million-acre ANWR, vast expanses abutting the state holdings to the east and west. While the North Slope is an incredibly petroliferous basin, only the state-owned portion in its core is developed. The federal government's role in Alaska is now under intense scrutiny. National interest in Alaska has been swelling, in step with the rising consumer prices for energy and threats of electricity shortages. The debate is not one of geology, for the petroleum potentials of both NPR-A and ANWR are well established. Rather, the decision to develop federal lands tugs at the emotional core of the nation. What are the fundamental American values? Are we, the people, in favor of pragmatic and judicious use of our resources, or do we jealously guard our fragile ecosystems? Furthermore, what rights and obligations do citizens and lawmakers from other states have in decreeing the fate of federal lands within Alaska's borders? Hopefully, the ultimate resolution of the controversy will spring from a national consensus, in the best traditions of democracy. And, whatever its denouement, it should be a solution palatable to the majority of Alaskans. ALPINE FIELD The start-up of Alpine Field was a watershed event for the North Slope, marking a fundamental change in how future arctic developments will proceed. Operator Phillips Petroleum expects to recover 430 million barrels from Alpine; the field began producing in November 2000 and currently averages more than 80,000 barrels per day. Just eight miles from the village of Nuiqsut, it is the first development on the North Slope that includes native-owned lands. Alpine is unique. The 40,000-acre field, which is produced from gravel pads totaling just 97 acres, is a completely roadless, zero-discharge oilfield. The self-contained development was constructed over three winter seasons at a cost of $1 billion. When drilling is complete, the main pad will feature 50 wells; separating, processing and reinjection facilities; power generation and sewage disposal systems; control systems and barracks for field personnel. That gravel pad is connected by a gravel road to a second satellite drillpad, which will host the remaining 68 wells. Alpine's only year-round connection to the outside world is its pipeline spur, which carries its oil 34 miles to the Kuparuk processing infrastructure. With the exception of tundra travel on ice roads between January and May, the sole access to the field is by air. By any measure, it's quite a field. "We believe that the reservoir has the ability to deliver more than 80,000 barrels per day," says Kevin Meyers, president and chief executive officer of Phillips Alaska Inc. "We're already looking at ways to debottleneck our Alpine facilities." Anadarko Petroleum, a 22% partner in Alpine Field, is also very pleased. "We're thrilled with the performance of Alpine, and we expect production there to continue for a long time," says John N. Seitz, president and chief executive officer. "It took some unconventional thinking to find Alpine, and some unconventional thinking to develop it. We believe that there are many more fields like Alpine-or larger-to be found on the North Slope."
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