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Global Permaculture.org
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Alaska oil is past peak
37% of historic high in 1988
drilling advocates and environmental groups avoid Alaska's peak

related pages:

• 100 Miles Per Gallon cars are here: but they can't solve oil dependency
• 55 mph speed limit would reduce US oil use more than Alaska Pipeline
• Vice President Sarah Palin? cementing the official illusion about Alaskan oil

The Alaska Pipeline requires a tremendous energy input to pump the oil from Prudhoe Bay (in north Alaska) to the harbor terminal at Valdez. While the energy input into the system is dwarfed by the energy density of the transported oil, it is a factor to consider as the oil fields dwindle further.

The pipeline consortium maintains a web page that discusses some of the energy required to keep the pipeline functioning at www.alyeska-pipe.com/Pipelinefacts/PumpStations.html In addition, drilling for oil in Arctic conditions requires much more energy than oil drilling in warmer climates, especially if the oil is closer to the surface and under higher pressures (ie. most of the Middle East fields).

from "Crude Oil: The Supply Outlook" Energy Watch Group, October 2007
www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin-global-pdf-EWG_Oilreport_10-2007.pdf

NGL: Natural Gas Liquids

http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/01/news/companies/hunt_for_oil.fortune/

LAST UPDATED: MAY 3, 2008

Hunting for oil beneath the ice
There's a new rush for petroleum from Alaska to the North Pole. Can ConocoPhillips and other energy giants find another Saudi Arabia under the ice?

By Barney Gimbel, writer

The folks at Conoco surveyed this slice of barren land about a decade ago. But times are a bit desperate up here in North America's largest oil region, and they've come back. "We're looking to see if we left anything behind," says Jim Darnall, an acquisition geophysicist for ConocoPhillips, as he brushes ice off his bushy gray beard. "We're trying to milk this field anyway we can."

Is this what America's late-20th-century oil paradise has been reduced to - the petroleum equivalent of rooting for loose change in the cushions of a sofa? U.S. crude production is at its lowest since 1949, and nowhere has that decline been steeper than in Alaska, where oil output is less than half what it was a decade ago. The fields that since the late 1970s have provided more than 20% of America's oil are slowly running dry. It's a phenomenon that is hardly limited to Alaska. The world's five largest oil companies are replacing only 82% of the oil they pump each year, as once-prodigious fields fade and state entities in such countries as Venezuela and Russia consolidate ever more control over their oil and gas.

The combination of falling reserves and $100-plus oil is sparking a frenzy of oil and gas activity in Alaska the likes of which hasn't been seen since the state's initial oil boom more than three decades ago. ....

Last year the Trans-Alaska Pipeline pumped only a third of its capacity and is set for another 6% decline this year. If the falloff continues, the cost of running the pipeline could exceed its revenues in the next two decades, and it may need to shut down.

www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/Another%20Nail%20in%20the%20Coffin.pdf

Another Nail in the Coffin of the Case Against Peak Oil
By
Matthew R. Simmons
January 2008

The USA had a brief respite from its relentless drop in oil output as it fell from being the world’s largest oil producer once it peaked in December 1970 when North Slope oil came on-stream, and once again when deepwater Gulf of Mexico oil exploration began. Sadly, both frontiers are now mature and in decline. Prudhoe Bay peaked in 1989 at 1.5 million barrels per day and now struggles to stay above 300,000 barrels per day.

www.aspo-usa.org

Peak Oil Review
Association for the Study of Peak Oil - USA
Vol. 2, No. 41
October 8, 2007

• The North Slope accounts for about 14 percent of US domestic oil production. Its 740,000 b/d is declining about 6 percent a year. One concern of producers is managing the decline of conventional oil production so that there is enough light oil to mix with increasing volumes of heavy oil suitable for shipping through the pipeline.
• BP will begin a heavy oil production test on the North Slope next summer. They will use a technology called cold heavy oil production with sand, or CHOPS, that is being adapted from techniques used with similar heavy oil deposits in Canada. Heavy oil could provide an additional 2 billion barrels from the North Slope.

www.aspo-usa.com/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=311&Itemid=91

Will Alaska Rise Again?
WRITTEN BY ROGER BLANCHARD
MONDAY, 04 FEBRUARY 2008

Alaska’s oil production commenced with developments in the Cook Inlet region of southern Alaska in the late 1950s, where production reached a peak of about 220,000 b/d in 1971. Cook Inlet production has since declined to ~15,000 b/d.

The discovery of the supergiant Prudhoe Bay field in 1967 ultimately led to Alaska becoming the top oil producing state in the U.S., at least for a while. In 1977, production started from the Prudhoe Bay field and Alaska’s oil production rose rapidly. The Prudhoe Bay field is the largest field ever discovered in the U.S. and Canada, and one of the twenty largest fields ever found globally. ....

Because the Prudhoe Bay field dwarfs all other North Slope fields, Alaska’s oil production has declined in parallel with the Prudhoe Bay field ....

In the late 1990s, the Clinton administration opened ~4 million acres in the northeast quadrant of NPR-A to oil and gas development. In 2004, the Bush administration opened ~8.8 million acres in the northwest quadrant, although about 2 million acres were deferred for further study. In 2005, the Bush administration opened ~600,000 acres in the Teshekpuk Lake area (northeast quadrant) but the U.S. District Court temporarily suspended leasing. In 2005, scoping started on ~9.2 million acres of the Southern Planning Area of NPR-A for future oil and gas development. ....

To date, no large discoveries have been found in NPR-A and I’m not expecting any. Approximately 0.33 Gb of oil have been discovered and production in the northeast quadrant started in 2006. That new production did not prevent Alaska’s production from continuing to decline in 2007. I believe the most productive part of the NPR-A will be the northeast quadrant and the lack of significant discoveries there does not bode well for the NPR-A contributing significantly to Alaska’s future oil production. ....

What impact would ANWR and NPR-A production have on future U.S. oil production? Figure 4 shows that future production from ANWR, NPR-A and the deepwater Gulf of Mexico would slow the decline in U.S. production out to about 2020 but then production declines rapidly.

Figure 4 – Historical [1900-2001] and projected [2002-2100] total U.S. oil production (Historical data is from Colin Campbell [1900-1959] and the US DOE/EIA [1960-2001])

The numbers used to calculate future U.S. production will be off to some degree but oil production from ANWR and NPR-A will never cause more than a temporary increase in U.S. oil production. By 2050, domestic production may have fallen below 1 million barrels a day.

One additional factor that may shape Alaska’s oil future is the minimum operational flow through the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline (TAPS), which has been estimated at 300,000 b/d. The minimal operational flow limit of the pipeline insures that the ultimate recovery from the North Slope will be less than what could be pumped from North Slope fields before they dry up unless some of the late-stage oil is transported by ship.

http://nixonisinhell.wordpress.com/2007/08/09/an-inconvenient-truth/

In 1999, Clinton-Gore opened the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska, (NPR-A), to oil drilling - 24 million acres adjacent to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, (ANWR). The NPR-A is an environmentally sensitive area. It contains Teshekpuk Lake, an important nesting ground for many species of migratory bird, including shorebirds and waterfowl. The NPR-A also supports more than half-a million caribou of the Western Arctic and Teshekpuk Caribou Herds. It contains the highest concentration of grizzly bears in Alaska’s arctic, as well as wolverines and wolves that prey on the caribou. NPR-A contains the headwaters and much of the Colville River, Alaska’s largest river north of the Arctic Circle.