ConocoPhillips won a drilling permit and a right-of-way grant from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Thursday for its proposed Greater Mooses Tooth Unit oil and gas development project (GMT1) in onshore Alaska.
The project will mark the first time oil and gas will be produced from federal land in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A).
The NPR-A is located on Alaska’s North Slope and is the largest single block of federally managed land in the United States.
The GMT1 project, proposed by ConocoPhillips Alaska includes construction of an 11.8-acre drilling pad in the northern portion of the 23-million acre NPR-A.
Along with above-ground elevated pipelines and an electric power line, the GMT1 project will provide access to both federal and Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC) oil and gas resources.
Peak monthly production from the project is expected to hit 30,000 gross barrels of oil per day, according to ConocoPhillips.
The decision comes just one week after the Department of Interior cancelled two U.S. Arctic lease auctions and denied Shell and Norway’s Statoil extensions for their current offshore Alaska leases following Shell’s disappointing offshore Alaska campaign.
