The Problem

Oil and Gas Development on Alaska's North Slope is a critical part of the US energy supplies and is facing a period of new growth to meet the increasing energy needs of the nation. A majority of all oil and gas-related activities (exploration, development, maintenance) take place in the middle of winter, when the tundra surface is stable. However, the window for the critical oil and gas operational season has been steadily decreasing over time, as the number of companies working on the North Slope is increasing.

Currently there are no methods to forecast the opening date for tundra travel (dependent on snow pack and soil temperature profiles), so field mobilization efforts are dependent on agencies to visit field sites and test field conditions. Weeks can be easily lost in the winter operating season due to delays in field verification of tundra conditions and the resulting mobilization.

Once the season is open, work does not proceed until ice roads and pads can be built. This effort is dependent on lake ice and under-ice water. Ice chipping is a common road construction technique used to build faster ice roads. Knowing when and how much water to be used is a constant constraint to industry. At the end of the winter season, projects depending on ice road networks are often faced with ending operations early or risking being caught out on the ice roads with flood stream crossings, or unusable section of ice road due to local melt.

All of these challenges result in high support costs due to shorter operational seasons, high uncertainty in timing mobilization of field efforts, and in finding and using water resources.

Proposed Solution

A set of tools will be developed as a useful solution for industry and management agencies. The proposed approach is based on an understanding of the physical conditions to ensure protection of fisheries and other natural resources on the sensitive tundra landscape. These solutions have the ability to not only describe current conditions, but to forecast conditions so that management agencies can respond to snow cover and soil temperature audits more effectively, and industry can plan the significant project mobilization efforts that take place every transportation season.

• Nowcast and Forecast tools for snow conditions and soil temperatures using weather stations and existing forecast models to provide snow distribution and soil conditions for short-term forecasts.
• Measure the relationships between soil strength and temperatures for freezing soils typical of field operational areas.
• Develop Nowcast and Forecast tools for predicting lake ice growth and potential recharge for lakes
• Develop water management and permitting approaches that correspond with the natural hydrologic cycle in arctic lakes to allow adaptive management approaches.

These tools have a high likelihood of improving the transportation logistics on the North Slope for winter operations. This will result in significant cost savings to industry and allow resource managers to better reduce risks do to development activities by having both more timely and accurate data.

• Nowcast and forecast predictive models for soil temperature conditions at remote data sites
• Development of weather forecast models (WRF) to provide short term forecasts of snow cover and soil temperature

Objectives

The objective of this project is to improve oil and gas transportation operations on the North Slope, Alaska. This includes providing methods and tools to develop Nowcast and Forecast models for environmental conditions related to tundra travel and management and water use associated with ice roads and pads and other industry operations.

Scope of Work

We will collect data from environmental stations and study lakes, including snow depth distributions and soil samples for soil-strength studies. This information will be used to develop forecast of environmental conditions used by industry and management for tundra travel and lake water use for ice roads and pads. The project team will develop near-real-time reporting products for both data stations and Nowcast/Forecast spatial products to help show current and projected conditions to help environmental managers manage increasingly complex field activities and industry improve their mobilization efforts, as well as increase the winter operational season.

Expected Impacts and Benefits

The cost savings to industry in a single season of building and operating a winter transportation system will result in economic returns greater than the project cost within the life of the project. Analysis of varying the soil temperature limit for opening tundra travel from -5C to -3C alone could result in an additional two weeks of tundra travel access. For exploration activities, the value of this time is approximately equal to half an exploration well. The development of short term forecasting of these environmental management conditions will have an even greater effect in allowing industry to better plan and mobilize project efforts. The transferability of these project efforts to future development needs for water addresses potential enhanced oil recovery methods, development of new facilities requiring water sources, and the development of future reservoirs in areas with inadequate natural water supplies for oil and gas development.