Hilcorp is planning to spend roughly $285 million in Alaska during 2018, the oil and gas producer’s operations manager Chad Helgeson said earlier this month.
This investment will be “holding pretty flat to where we were last year,” Helgeson said, the Peninsula Clarion newspaper reported.
Of the $285 million, $83 million will be spent on new drilling, $96 million will go to operating expenses, taxes, and salaries, while the largest portion of the planned investment — $106 million — will be spent on infrastructure upgrades, such as replacing compressor control systems in Hilcorp’s pipeline network with modern digital controllers.
Currently, some of Hilcorp’s gas compressors use 1960s-era pneumatic and hydraulic control systems, Helgeson said.
Hilcorp has been Cook Inlet’s largest oil and gas producer since buying many of the local assets of Marathon and Chevron in 2011 and 2012, the Clarion reported.
It has since acquired leases on 20 hydrocarbon fields and 14 of the 16 platforms in Cook Inlet. The privately-owned Texas-based company supplies much of the natural gas that regional utilities use to generate electricity and heat, the Clarion reported.
In 2017, Hilcorp planned an Alaska investment of roughly $220 million, Helgeson said. Of the 24 wells it drilled last year in Alaska, half were in Cook Inlet — seven onshore and five offshore, Helgeson said.
The other wells were on the North Slope, where Hilcorp began operating in 2014 after buying a 50% share in three fields leased by BP, Kallanish Energy learns.
This year, the North Slope will again receive a large share of Hilcorp’s drilling attention — the company is planning 19 new wells there. Seventeen will be at the Milne Point field, which it shares with BP, the Clarion reported.
Hilcorp plans seven new Cook Inlet wells in 2018. Five will be offshore wells from its Steelhead platform into the McArthur River field, one of Cook Inlet’s most productive areas, to extract both oil and gas.
