BP is spending $30 million this year in engineering studies and permitting for the project, according to Carl Lundgren, Liberty project manager. The company had 25 people dedicated to the project last year and will add to that number in 2007, he said.

Lundgren and other BP officials briefed the Ways and Means Committee of the Alaska House of Representatives Jan. 31 on upcoming projects that will result in more oil being produced.

Liberty is in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea five miles offshore Mikkelson Bay and northeast of the Prudhoe Bay oil field, the largest producing field on the North Slope. The field will be developed with wells drilled from a pad near the Endicott field eight miles west of the Liberty reservoir.

The wells, drilled laterally 40,000 to 45,000 feet from the surface location of the drill rig, will set world records for extended-reach drilling, Lundgren said. The longest extended-reach wells, also drilled by BP at the Wytch Farm oil field in the U.K., reach out to about 35,000 feet. If the ultra-extended reach wells can successfully produce from Liberty, the technology could be applied at other locations in the Beaufort Sea where oil reservoirs are discovered a few miles offshore. This would eliminate the need to build costly artificial gravel islands.

If the project goes ahead, BP will order long lead-time equipment and begin construction in early 2008. Included in the equipment needed will be a specialized drill rig to be built for the project, Lundgren told the legislators. Liberty could be in production in 2011, according to the current schedule, he said. Its peak production rate will be about 40,000 barrels per day.

Lundgren said the field has about 100 million barrels of recoverable oil and is the largest undeveloped known conventional oil reservoir on the North Slope.

BP has been working for several years on ways of developing Liberty. The field is very similar to BP's offshore Northstar field, which is about six miles offshore Prudhoe Bay. Northstar was developing using an offshore artificial gravel island to support the producing wells and processing facilities. A subsea pipeline was built to shore.

The project experienced delays, some due to permitting issues, and wound up costing more than had been estimated. BP had initially considered a plan for an artificial island and subsea pipeline for Liberty, but in 1992 and 1993 began investigating whether the field could be economically produced with long-distance wells drilled from shore.

The current plan is for the wells to be drilled from the Endicott field, where there is ample spare capacity in oil processing facilities and pipelines to handle the production from Liberty. Endicott went into production in 1987 and its facilities and pipelines were designed for a peak production rate of 120,000 barrels per day. Endicott is now producing only 15,000 barrels per day, leaving substantial unused capacity in facilities at the field.