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Alaska North Slope Crude Production Rises to Highest Since March, But Down From Last Year

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Photo Credit: Paxson Woelber/flickrOil production in Alaska’s North Slope gained to an eight-month high as producers boosted rates in the Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk fields following seasonal maintenance.

Output climbed 4.1 percent in November from a month earlier to 556,471 barrels a day, the most since March, data posted on Alaska’s Department of Revenue website show. The yield is down 4.5 percent from year-earlier levels, the agency said.

“BP’s North Slope production has returned to normal after a successful turnaround season,” Dawn Patience, a spokeswoman for London-based BP, Alaska’s largest oil producer, said by telephone from Anchorage.

The North Slope, once the largest crude source for the western U.S., has been producing less oil every year since 2002 as output from wells naturally declines and isn’t replaced. The region’s refiners have increasingly depended on oil imports from overseas and shipments from Canada and other U.S. states to counter the shrinking supply, boosting California’s receipts of oil by rail to a seasonal record.

BP has increased output in Alaska after finishing seasonal maintenance in late September, Patience said. The state’s energy producers typically take advantage of warmer weather, lower yield and pipeline shutdowns during the summer to perform routine maintenance in fields.

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Tentative oil plan for Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve

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The U.S. Interior Department opened the door to the possibility of an oil pipeline across the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska and to oil and gas leasing on 11.8 million acres of it.

The draft development proposal unveiled Monday by U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar represents the federal government’s first coordinated plan for the 22-million-acre reserve, which has seen limited oil production in recent years despite controversy over potential threats to wildlife.

The reserve, which lies west of the oil fields on Alaska’s North Slope, is home to the famous Western Arctic caribou herd, numbering about 325,000, and a smaller herd of 45,000 caribou that migrates near Teshekpuk Lake.

The largest single block of public land in the country, the reserve contains an estimated 549 million barrels of economically recoverable oil and 8.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The compromise plan — unveiled after a long study that collected more than 400,000 public comments — would continue to protect some of the most ecologically sensitive areas, including Teshekpuk Lake, home to tens of thousands of geese and brant that migrate to the far north during sunny Arctic summers.

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