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Seismic survey design in environmentally sensitive regions of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska

Division of Oil and Gas, Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Anchorage, Alaska

Corresponding author: physics@mtaonline.net

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

The discovery of Alpine Field has renewed industry interest in oil exploration within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA). Alpine Field, near the northeast border of the NPRA, is the first commercial production from the Jurassic sands within the Kingak Shale. It is estimated to contain in excess of 400 million barrels of proven reserves and, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the stratigraphic conditions found at Alpine are likely to extend across the northern portion of the NPRA. Over the last several years, geophysical companies have collected 3D seismic data along the expected Alpine trend.

Several companies have expressed interest in exploring regions north of the Alpine trend near the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area (TLSA) shown as Zone 1 in Figure 1. Unfor-tunately, the Alpine sands as well as Ellesmerian sequences are not present in the area north of Teshekpuk Lake. Ellesmerian prospects are very important to industry due to their proven performance as commercial petroleum reservoirs. The Sag River Sandstone, Shublik Limestone, and Ivishak Formation of the Sadlerochit Group are part of the Ellesmerian Sequence and are considered the principle source of oil in the Prudhoe Bay and Northstar fields. Approximately 98% of the oil endowment in northern Alaska comes from organic-rich shales and limestones within the Ellesmerian and Beaufortian sequences (Bird, 1994).

View larger version (151K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Figure 1. Zone 1 lies to the north of Teshekpuk Lake along the Arctic Costal Plain in northern Alaska. It is an environmentally sensitive area known as the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area (TLSA). This image is available from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Northern Field Office Web site (06/29/2004): http://aurora.ak.blm.gov/arctic/Landuse/black.htm