Pioneer Natural Resources Co. announced an agreement Feb. 25 with ConocoPhillips to process raw crude oil from Pioneer’s new Oooguruk field in processing facilities in the Kuparuk field, which ConocoPhillips operates.

BP and ExxonMobil, along with ConocoPhillips, are major Kuparuk owners, and agreed to the deal.

The company said in a Feb. 25 press release the production handling agreement is the first of its kind between the owners of two North Slope units.

“This is an important precedent for companies exploring on the North Slope because it shows that agreements can be done with the major companies to use spare capacity in production facilities,” Pioneer spokesman Tadd Owens said.

Pioneer has essentially completed construction of the offshore Oooguruk project, including pipelines to shore. Drilling of production wells is now underway on an artificial gravel island in shallow waters five miles offshore. Production should begin in the first half of 2008, and is expected to peak at 15,000 to 20,000 barrels per day in 2010.

The negotiation of the agreement to use spare capacity in Kuparuk processing facilities has taken considerable time, however. One recent complication, which Pioneer officials say delayed the agreement, was the state of Alaska’s passage of a new production tax last November that created tax issues that had to be resolved.

The new state tax treats facility access fees as profits on production of the large fields, subjecting the fees to a state tax that can exceed 50 percent in some cases. Independent companies have to compensate the major company owners for the higher state tax, which has raised the cost of the access agreements, Ken Thompson, managing partner of Brooks Range, said in an interview.

“The tax regime has definitely inflated the cost of access to these facilities for third parties,” Owens told the news organization Platts. “The state administration acknowledges that this was an unintended consequence of the tax change. We’ve been in discussion with them for a couple of months on a possible solution that could be done through regulations. If that happens the cost of access could come down.”

The agreement between Pioneer and the Kuparuk owners for facility sharing could set the stage for similar agreements with other independent companies exploring undeveloped oil accumulations near the big producing fields on the North Slope.

Independent company Brooks Range Petroleum is evaluating a small discovery north of the Prudhoe Bay field and hopes to arrange an agreement to process the oil in a nearby Prudhoe field processing plant.

Another company developing a nearby new field, ENI Petroleum Co. Inc., chose to build its own processing facility. ENI will start work later this year in development of the Nikaitchuq field, another small offshore field near Pioneer’s Oooguruk project.

Pioneer owns 70 percent of Oooguruk with the remaining 30 percent held by ENI.