New oil takes time

North Slope production doesn’t come on line quickly or cheaply

Everyone talks about the need to boost North Slope oil production. Actually, Alaska would be happy with just a slower decline. Production could fall below 800,000 barrels a day in the next year. That’s a drop of almost 60 percent from the 1988 peak. Forget the dreams of getting back to 1 million barrels a day as too many candidates have promised eager voters in past years. That’s swimming upstream, and the best Alaska can hope for these days is to tread water.

And even that will cost billions of dollars in new investment.

No matter what anyone tells you, finding and developing new oil fields on the North Slope costs big money. And the rewards take years. So when Alaskans demand that companies invest in our state and pump more oil into the pipeline to feed more dollars into our treasury, it helps to understand it’s just not that easy.

Take for example the Alpine field satellites of Fiord and Nanuq. They’re called satellites because they are among the small oil deposits ringing the main fields of Prudhoe Bay, Kuparuk and Alpine. Were they on their own, they probably wouldn’t make sense to develop. But because they’re so close to production and support facilities at the main field, they can be financially attractive.

Anchorage Daily News