ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – For endless miles, white, glittery snow is propelled across the tundra by the blowing winds of the Arctic.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re lucky, you\u2019ll see a caribou or Arctic fox, maybe a migratory bird or the chicken-like Willow ptarmigan. Watch out for polar bears.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s here \u2014 an Alaska Airlines plane ride north to Deadhorse \u2014 where Australian company Santos is betting big on a new oil field: Pikka.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be the anchor asset that underpins our long-term growth,\u201d Bruce Dingeman, Executive Vice President and President Alaska with Santos, said at this year\u2019s Santos Investor Day. He went on to call it a \u201ccore growth pillar in Santos\u2019 portfolio.\u201d <\/p>\n
Now is the exciting part for the company and people working on the project after months, years, of planning and building: first oil has been produced, and revenue is expected within the next few months. It is the time to show off goodwill gestures, such as a $16 million boat ramp for the Alaska Native people of Nuiqsut to travel the Colville River.<\/p>\n
\u201cBig River,\u201d John Kunaknana, Community Field Coordinator with Santos, said about the rivers Alaska Natives named \u201cKuukpik.\u201d<\/p>\n
The drill site is still so new the paint hasn\u2019t been scuffed. <\/p>\n
Expect to wear blue booties over your shoes to protect the new carpeting in the \u201cman camp.\u201d<\/p>\n
This new player on the North Slope, along with the Spanish company Repsol, have invested more than $3 billion in the project at a recently discovered field west of Prudhoe Bay. Lawmakers, oil advocates and the industry call the production a \u201cmajor milestone,\u201d and \u201chistoric\u201d and predict roughly 400 full-time jobs. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is one of the most significant achievements on the North Slope in decades and further cements the region\u2019s renaissance. Pikka will help refill the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, create great jobs for Alaskans, and bring billions to the state over its lifespan \u2014 benefiting all who live here,\u201d Sen. Lisa Murkowski said in a news release.<\/p>\n
Santos expects Pikka to produce 400 million barrels of oil over its expected lifetime of 30 years.<\/p>\n
The company recently took a group of reporters to see the site and tour the areas where the company is working. <\/p>\n
On the tour with reporters, just a few days before it first started producing oil, Santos Senior Vice President of External Affairs, Joe Balash, said the company is \u201call in\u201d as he talked about the roll Santos could play in Alaska\u2019s future.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s large, but don\u2019t expect the heyday from the 80s oil development.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a large project. It\u2019s not Prudhoe Bay,\u201d said Larry Persily an oil and gas analyst. \u201cSo, Alaska, North Slope oil production before this was \u2014 I don\u2019t know, last time I looked, 450,000, 460,000 barrels a day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prudhoe Bay alone averaged roughly 202,600 barrels per day from 2019-2023 fiscal years, according to data from the Alaska Department of Revenue. <\/p>\n
Still, if Pikka reaches the 80,000 barrels per day that Santos forecasts, then it would be the largest producing site in the state after Prudhoe Bay.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a significant increase, it\u2019s an increase in production, but this isn\u2019t a monumental change, the earth, everyone\u2019s happy, massive dividends, and everybody gets a new school increase,\u201d Persily said.<\/p>\n
Still, Santos \u2014 pronounced san-toss, like \u201ctoss the ball\u201d \u2014 is excited.<\/p>\n
Named for the I\u00f1upiaq word meaning \u201cup there,\u201d Pikka is expected to produce about 80,000 barrels of oil per day by 2026 with an initial reach of 20,000 barrels per day.<\/p>\n
Crews have drilled 28 wells, and other huge buildings have either been built or barged in, such as a facility to grind rock down and then re-inject it back into the well. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re heading to the NGI facility [Nanushuk Grind and Inject facility] which is where we take the big rocks and turn them into little rocks, we pulverize them,\u201d William \u201cRock\u201d Rachenstein, with Santos, shouted through the noise while giving a handful of reporters and photographers the tour.<\/p>\n
In one building, a brown, sludgy mix swirled beneath the metal safety grating walking area. On another floor, metal balls smashed rock.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe metal balls are what we use to beat up Mother Earth,\u201d Rauchenstein said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is our chemical mix deck,\u201d he continued, \u201cWe take all of our chemicals here, mix them with the slug slurry to inject it back down the hole.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the drilling site, Aaron Simpson monitors workers for safety as well as depth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re drilling, right now and we\u2019re at 16,756 [feet],\u201d Simpson said. \u201cI\u2019m monitoring pump pressure … all the equipment.\u201d <\/p>\n
The goal is 17,400 feet, he says. <\/p>\n
About an hour\u2019s drive from the drill site, there\u2019s a seawater treatment plant that was built and brought into the North Slope from Indonesia. It uses water from the Beaufort Sea that comes complete with a fence to keep seals out. The plant is a first of its kind here since the 80s.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s from the Beaufort sea, [it] is where the water comes from,\u201d Tim Brown from Santos said about the facility. \u201dDown below the water line there is a hole cut into it, some of the other facilities don\u2019t have bars on them. They\u2019re called \u2018seal bars.\u2019 Sometimes you\u2019ll look down there, in other facilities, and there\u2019s a seal swimming around in there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that they\u2019re actually out in the field, we\u2019ve got some equipment online, we\u2019re closer to bringing in production fluids, it\u2019s much more exciting,\u201d Trevor Palaniuk, Operations and Maintenance Manager, said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe just produce so much oil, or we will be producing so much oil.\u201d<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KTUU. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – For endless miles, white, glittery snow is propelled across the tundra by the blowing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[11608,16722,16720,10752,16714,16723,16724,16717,16716,16719,13256,16715,127,5000,16718,16721],"class_list":["post-34361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-repsol","tag-alaska","tag-alaska-news","tag-arctic","tag-bp","tag-deadhorse","tag-ktuu","tag-ktvf","tag-murkowski","tag-north-slope","tag-palsha","tag-pikka","tag-prudhoe-bay","tag-repsol","tag-santos","tag-trans-alaska-pipeline","tag-tundra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}